Jotters.

[jason h]

When I arrived at Secondary School aged nine, the class was issued with a Jotter. This was my first that I'd been introduced to the practice of keeping a separate workbook for writing out my thoughts, exercises, before writing them up in my best handwriting in the workbook that I'd hand in to the teacher. Since leaving Secondary School, I never used one again and have never used one outside of school.
The Jotter book was made up of really poor quality paper. If you paused your pen on the page for a second, the ink would bleed out, looking like a little blue spider on the page.
Anyone alse remember these?

[Trickyvee]

Re: Jotters.

We didn't have jotters in high school. We did in primary school but these were our actual exercise books, with bad paper and all. We only ever wrote in pencil.

[jason h]

Re: Jotters.

Yeh, used pencils at First School myself. So you never went to Secondary School Trickyvee?

[Trickyvee]

Re: Jotters.

Yes I did. High school is secondary school but we didn't have jotters. Just higher quality exercise books to write in.

[jason h]

Re: Jotters.

OK, I meant Middle School then.

[Heather74]

Re: Jotters.

I remember been given one to take on a school trips a few times.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Jotters.

OK, I meant Middle School then.

no middle school. Straight from primary at 11 into high school until 16.

[Richard1978]

Re: Jotters.

By the time I was at secondary school they were called rough books.

I remember the term jotters being used a fair bit in the Beano.

[HG]

Re: Jotters.

Yes we had jotters, poor quality paper with no lines printed.

[shilton dipper]

Re: Jotters.

wish i'd had jotters at school esp as i'm a doodler..........funnily enough one of the teachers i work with has given her class jotters this year

[darren]

Re: Jotters.

We had jotters as well.

Hard keeping my writing in a straight line as the paper had no lines.
sometimes i got a ruler and drew lines.

[80sChav]

Re: Jotters.

Never had these sadly ... !!, it would of been well cool no doubts though!

The nearest we had was "rough books" for English, Maths and Science what you basically did your "rough notes" in and information taken as notes etc ... or failing that your "Homework Diary" if you was one of the tough guy's/gals!

80sChav

[darren]

Re: Jotters.

Regarding jotters not sure if im dreaming this but where rough books the paper a darker colour im near sure it was.

And then the jotters where white lined paper which iam sure of.

never had these sadly ... !!, it would of been well cool no doubts though!

The nearest we had was "rough books" for english, maths and science what you basically did your "rough notes" in and information taken as notes etc ... Or failing that your "homework diary" if you was one of the tough guy's/gals!

80schav

[zabadak]

Re: Jotters.

They were very poor quality paper, designed for rough notes, only. We had to use proper nib pens and the ink used to soak through and smudge!

[Big Tim]

Re: Jotters.

We had "Rough Books" too, at Primary School, at least. Exactly as others have described, really poor quality paper, almost a cross between ordinary paper and paper towels - and the comment above about the ink soaking in is definitely correct; and also, if you used a pencil which had been freshly sharpened, it would just rip the page if you pressed too hard, or be too faint otherwise. For some reason, the covers of "Rough Books" at our school were always green. We then had better quality exercise books for actual work that was marked by the teachers. Quite a lot of written work at school was done in "draft" form in a rough book, as the final thing was often done (hand written) on lined A4 paper and bound together in a card folder which was generally called "project" work.

We also had "handwriting" books, which I've never seen since - they had wide line spacing of blue lines, with two smaller pink lines in between, which apparently was supposed to train pupils to all write neatly and as uniformly as possible.