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When students rip out papers from a spiral notebook, the edge has a row of little holes. Unlike when I was young, these pages have perforations running down the right side so that the strips can be easily removed, making the paper much neater.

I taught at university my whole career and we called these annoying strips "shitlets." And it was my (and others') policy that submitted work was to have the shitlets removed. "Homework with shitlets attached will be returned ungraded. And if I find shitlets outside my door and your homework shoved under it, then I'm just going to shove it back."

In my retirement, I've picked up a part-time job teaching math at a little Christian school. I want to have the same policy, but I'm pretty sure that "shitlet" is on the list of words I shouldn't use in the classroom.

So is there another word for shitlets? Preferably one that is disparaging? If not, would it be too far off topic to have a contest on this list to coin a Puritan-friendly yet derogatory term for them? I'd be happy to post a bounty.

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    I've seen it called fringe or perf (the latter especially if it has the perforation down the side).
    – Canadian Yankee
    Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 19:52
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    I might try shizzle
    – Jim
    Commented Mar 16, 2021 at 7:40
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    @BigRigz If you just want dry communication, then have at. I like my verbiage to be richer and more colorful. "Shitlets" was perfect because it summed up on one word the abhorrence for sloppy submissions. No one wants to distance themselves from "perforated edges." But shitlets are another matter.
    – B. Goddard
    Commented Mar 22, 2021 at 14:12
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    I find it difficult to believe that any teacher of children would have used the word "shitlets".
    – Barmar
    Commented Mar 22, 2021 at 18:11
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    ... but tearable puns have a long history.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Mar 23, 2021 at 0:05

4 Answers 4

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+100

Urban Dictionary and AZdictionary both define those as 'kadoobies.'

A classroom appropriate, yet ridiculous and flip title for a ridiculous and wildly inconvenient aspect of spiral notebooks.

To give it a Biblical slant, you could make a pun out of it and call them holey kadoobies.

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    Why not "holey kadoobies" to give it a "Biblical slant"? I thought of "holey sheet," but that seems kind of transparent.
    – livresque
    Commented Mar 24, 2021 at 0:52
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According to a professional printer they are called edgings. At least when they are on printer paper. But I think it would do for spiral notebooks too.

Robert Charles Lee
, Printbroker, financial printer, ex-lawyer

I’m in the printing industry. Answered this months ago:—

[microperforated] pin-feed edge
tractor edge
sprocket edge

Once they’re torn off, they’re called ‘edgings.’

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I am used to the term selvage as the finished edge of a bolt of textiles and am pleased to find the wikipedia article has a use in printing, as the excess material on the scrap side of a perforation, so it applies to this case as well

In the print industry, selvage is the excess area of a printed or perforated sheet of any material, such as the white border area of a sheet of stamps or the wide margins of an engraving etc.

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I had a teacher in HS who called them "SCUGGIES" and we were not allowed to turn in work that had any scuggies on them. This was before the time of perforated edges. Not only did we carry around a ruler for math class we carried around a ruler to take paper out of our spiral notebooks without any scuggies.

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  • And you just left the nasty things inside of the spiral to get in the way of any pencil that you might want to store there?
    – Conrado
    Commented May 22, 2023 at 22:22

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