Read the first sentence, which mentions "hydrogen bonding." There's no excuse for introducing a term like this, this early in a general articel. Even with the miracle of hyperlinks.

Better? I must confess to being a high school student not overly keen on chemistry, but then, that might come in handy when trying to make the article more accessible.

I'm actually going to disagree there - since that's pretty much the definition of "true" paper (otherwise a rush mat would qualify as "paper", I can't see any real way to avoid it without oversimplifying the lead (otherwise, the whole "paper was invented by the Chinese despite papyrus being used earlier" in the next paragraph would be hopelessly confusing).

(edit to add) The American Heritage Dictionary's definition includes the phrase "by deposit from an aqueous suspension" which IMO is no improvement.

Sadly, giggy replaced it with a marginally worse sentence:



I'm not really ~up with~ the chemistry of paper, but it would seem from the structures of the chemicals used to make paper the hydrogen bonding in question is H-O, as N/F doesn't appear anywhere and isnt mentioned in any of the chemicals used in the pulping process. Then again, the article itself is not very clear on the structure. The only "chemistry" part really is in the papermaking section, and that is (IMO) pretty vague.

At a guess though I highly doubt the lead was written by a "chemistry geek" so much as someone with a GCSE in Chemistry using words that they'd heard of in class, as phrases like "subsequently held together by" don't really mean anything. The article would probably benefit from the attention of someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Sadly this is another example of an article on Wikipedia that is not so much an "article" as a cobbling together of various concepts, ideas, things someone read once somewhere in a book, trivia, etc, to make something that is truly "wiki".

Not to go off topic or anything

Seems someone forgot about the importance of carbon. It looks as if the article is about WATER.

Yep. It's hard to generalize because so many things are now called paper. In classical plant fiber papers the hydrogen-bonds are strictly -OH---: O- bonds between cellulostic hydroxyls. But there are inportant van der Waals interactions between fibers in all papers. But this nitty gritty doesn't belong here in a more general article, unless it is intended that the article only cover plant-fiber papers. Even "weak chemical bonds" without mention of type or element in a first sentence isn't quite right (except for classical paper), because some modern synthetic papers also have fibers held together by ordinary chemical bonds. Weak bonds covers both H-bonds in plant fiber papers, and also other van der Waals' forces.

Some modern synthetic papers are actually "cured" (fibers chemically cross linked with strong chem bonds) but others aren't. The most famous example of the latter being Tyvek, which is mentioned in the wiki. Tyvek is not cured and has no H-bonds. It's actually made of very straight polyethylene fibers, very small, pressed together with heat. They're held together after that like any high-density polyethylene (HDPE), with van der Waals forces between the long thin hyrocarbon polymer fibers. Like a Gecko clinging to a surface, but even stronger.



Well, you've got to get all mention of synthetics like Tyvek out of the see also section if you're going to define "paper" as being plant fiber based. And in that case, just say "weak chemical bonds" since not only H-bonds but also van der Waals forces between fibers are important in plant fiber papers. As I noted, in Tyvek the latter is all there are, so you don't NEED H-bonds for small fibers to adhere to each other enough to make a tough material (a paper). All that's important is that you press it to the point that intermolecular forces of both types take over, as in a Gecko's foot.

I personally don't consider Tyvek true paper and - although it gets a brief mention in "The Future of Paper" - haven't treated it as such; if we're going to include Tyvek, we also have to include papyrus, which throws the whole "history of" section out of whack by a couple of thousand years - and while an edit war between pro-Chinese and pro-Egypt factions might be amusing (if you don't think it would happen over something so petty, you've never read the history of Franco-Mongol Alliance) I don't think it would serve any useful purpose.

Do you consider paper currency to be made of "true paper"? This is sort of a No True Scotsman type argument.

If it's Hong Kong style plastic currency, no - otherwise you may as well include cellophane. If we're going to go with a broad "paper is floppy stuff that you write on" approach it draws too much into the orbit. While it's not a scientific test, every source listed at dictionary.com includes some mention of cellulose (some with a "or something resembling this, as in papyrus" get-out clause).

As far as I'm concerned I've wasted way too much of my life on this; someone else can take this one up from now on.

Better.

I'll remind everyone that it was I who brought attention to the article [[paper]].

Just another example of my tireless, selfless contributions to this site.

I personally never doubted it and encourage you to contribute productively whenever you can.