This is pretty mundane, but it also calls for opinions, so I landed here.
Say you have a stack of 10 papers with printing on them to collate/staple. The bottom 9 pieces have the material in portrait (vertical) mode. The top sheet has the material in landscape (horizontal) mode. You can’t reprint the top sheet so it matches.
So how should you staple it? (Note that “top left” in all examples refers to that position when the papers are held in either portrait or landscape mode.)
Portrait orientation, staple on top left, and top sheet has its “top” to the left.
Portrait orientation, staple on top left, and top sheet has its “top” to the right.
Landscape orientation, staple on top left, and other sheets have their “top” to the left.
Landscape orientation, staple on top left, and other sheets have their “top” to the right.
You staple with the orientation that looks correct on the top sheet. In the scenario you lay out, though, I’d be mighty tempted to move the top sheet to the bottom of the pile.
It makes sense to ensure the following 9 pages are as easily read as possible… So staple at the normal place for them…top left (you already said they are portrait)… Except if the 9 pages may have a the lower right corner marked out with a box saying “Staple here”… or something
The top sheet then goes on the best way … which is very hard to determine. Probably the staple should go at the left hand margin, because all pages have a left hand margin.
I like your thinking, but unless you are right and I have been whooshed, I rather suspect Calatin meant put the staple in the middle of the left margin.
This is actually what I would go for, so I voted for option 5 in the poll. To expand on this: landscape orientation, staple (or staples) in the left-hand margin, portrait pages with their top to the left. That way, you can read the cover page, then turn it to portrait and read the rest like a notebook. Of course, if the other 9 pages are double-sided, they will need to be printed in the correct orientation for this to work. If the pages are already printed double-sided in ‘book’ orientation, you’ll need to go for option 1.
In my choice, the staple(s) would go go parallel to the edge, as they are forming a sort of binding, but in the case of a single corner staple it should be at 45 degrees. This makes the stapling slightly more secure if the document is used again and again.
Having said all that, I also like kunilou and Isilder’s answers.
You guys do realise this is exactly the same as option 1, right?
Anyway, I voted “Other” - two staples, left margin, portrait - since the first page is readable without opening the thing, its orientation is irrelevant, so we want what’s best for the other pages, and IME one staple doesn’t ever cut it.
Poor planning by the OP. That said, I’d rather be pissed off by the wrong placement of the staple on the single landscape sheet, than the subsequent nine sheets.
In defense of self, this was a multi-page document in PDF format, organized by someone else (at corporate no less) which I felt obliged to print and keep for myself for frequent reference.
To clarify this topic of how to staple landscape documents, think about the end result? After the documents are handed out where could the recipients end-up putting the documents, other than the waste-bin; most likely, on a “peg” in a file, or in a binder! So how would you put the landscape documents into a file or binder? Let’s stick with the binder scenario. Logic would say since you hole-punch the left-margin-side of the portrait documents, that would make it hole-punched on the top-margin-side of the landscape documents. If you stapled landscape documents on the corner to coincide with the written contents, the staple would now be on the lower-left in the binder, or if you turn the documents upside down, to ensure that staple is on the top in the binder, your landscape documents are now hole-punched in the binder with the staple on the top-right and the contents are also upside down in the binder. In both of these cases, it now makes it quite difficult to open the landscape documents, no matter which way you have hole-punched them, because the staple is now in-the-way and restricts reading and access to the stapled documents. That means extra frustrating efforts are now required to pull out the staple, and if you want to keep that bunch of papers together in the binder it requires a new staple in proper top corner. Therefore, to have the harmony with both portrait and landscape documents; alone, on a “peg” in a file, or in a “binder”, rule-of-thumb is that all portrait documents are stapled in the upper-left-corner and all landscape documents are stapled in the upper-right-corner; whether alone or mixed. That way you can NEVER go wrong. Try it out! Staple a bunch of papers in all of the various scenarios debated online and hole-punch them for a binder! Forty plus years ago when proper business admin procedures were taught in school, this was one of the very basic business admin 101 techniques. Yes…there were photocopiers back then, as crude as they were! However, this kind of teaching, such as how to staple, how to properly answer the telephone, how to properly prepare documents, and so on, no longer exists and has created this hodgepodge of debates as evidenced online. Just search the internet and you will see what I mean. Now days just in-case you may be shown the wrong technique, take a moment to use “common sense” and “logic” to figure it out and think of the end-result. That also includes taking a moment to figure out how to feed the documents and set the staple-finishing in a photocopier because that is also where many go wrong!
This is a topic of critical national importance. It depends on the use of the file.
Stored in a file for infrequent reference, upper left hand corner
Legal document, or a document that is to be signed by several people, across the top with at least 3 staples.
Reference document to be held on a desk, A staple ever inch and heavy paper covers
Something you’re removing from a personnel file to give to someone for their retention or destruction, upper left.
5 Something in Chinese, Hebrew or Japanese, upper right
Receipts attached to a document, in the center top, two staples
Am I the only one who had ‘office skills’ in high school? Along w/ shorthand and typing on the sweet, sweet IBM Selectric and learned the difference between business, personal, and personal note envelopes, and how to do invisible correction with the brush with a round eraser?
