There is no Substitute for Words on Paper in Some Business Situations

Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

While it may be possible to transmit documents by e-mail it may also be the case that for anything confidential and needing to be kept secure e-mail may be too risky an option so for parts of most businesses keeping physical records is still essential and the advent of the printer/copier has made duplicating documents needed by various people much easier.

Paper in some form has existed for more than 2000 years and the word comes from the Egyptian - Papyrus - which wasn't actually paper at all. Papyrus was made from strips of the papyrus plant that were beaten and placed in layers at right which was then pounded into a thin sheet and dried in the sun. It was clear, even then, that keeping records was useful, in fact essential for some purposes.

However, papyrus was only the first example of a medium created for recording information. The origins of the paper with which we are more familiar in the 21st century is China, where experiments in pulping plant fibres and then mixing them with water were first conducted in the second century AD. Then they were filtered through a flat screen submerged in the water and when the screen was lifted out the fibres would be in a thin layer on the screen's surface. Once dried this thin layer became paper.

Papermaking spread slowly throughout Asia to Nepal and later to India. The basics of mathematical and medical knowledge, which evolved in India and the Islamic world.

Printed information became more widely available after the next development when, in the 15th Century, Johann Gothenburg perfected movable type and printed a bible in 1456.
Today, we take paper for granted, not thinking twice about buying a newspaper or a book or what writers and artists would do without it. Equally paper is one essential tool of almost every business you can think about.

Although much has been said and written about our moving to a paperless society since the internet and email became widespread, and especially as we have become more concerned about deforestation, the environment and climate change, there is still a case for written records both in the home and in the office.

Internet systems can crash, computers break down and electronic back-up with a memory stick or CD or even online archiving won't cover every situation, especially for a business. There are times when clients, customers or official organisations want to see a printed copy(also known as a hard copy) of a document. Any legal agreement or contract, for example, is most likely to be in printed form on paper, especially where there are signatures needed and it is important that the signatures are authentic, witnessed and verifiable. In this sort of situation an electronically produced signature will not do.

Look in any office and it's a safe bet that there will be plenty of documents still flying off the printer/copier, no matter how "green" a business aspires to be. A document is astill a valuable record of a long-running situation and useful useful for reference in meetings and many other situations. So there are times when a physical, printed record is still an essential back-up.