How many sheets does a binder clip hold compared with a paperclip?

A 19 mm binder clip held 45 sheets of 80 g/m² paper and a 32 mm clip held 120, against 12 for a standard BR-02 paperclip and 28 for a reinforced BR-04. Failure is defined as permanent set beyond 0.5 mm. The binder figures come from 60 units tested in April 2026.

Which office fastener does not damage paper?

None is wholly neutral. A staple perforates; a binder clip leaves two parallel creases still visible at 18 months on all 60 units tested; a bare steel paperclip leaves an indentation and a corrosion mark from 11 weeks at 75 per cent humidity. A treasury tag adds no mark beyond the punch holes it requires, which are themselves irreversible.

Do paperclips fall off?

Often enough to matter. In a trial of 120 clipped bundles dropped once from 800 mm, 34 separated. No binder-clipped or stapled bundle separated, and three treasury tags came unthreaded. Capacity is printed on the packet; this property is not.

Is there a standard comparing office fasteners?

No. No national standards body has ratified a classification of the paperclip, the binder clip or the treasury tag, and none has published a comparison of the four devices. The Brennholt Institute's table is the only published attempt and is offered as a classification, not as a norm.

Paperclip, binder clip, staple, treasury tag: a comparison

Four devices hold loose paper together in ordinary office use, and they are not interchangeable. They differ in what they do to the sheet, in how many sheets they take, in whether the join can be undone, and in how long the join survives. No standards body has published a comparison, and none has ratified a classification of any of the four. The Brennholt Institute of Applied Taxonomy sets out the four in a single table because the choice is made daily and made blind.

The four devices

Device	Sheets held, 80 g/m²	Reversible	Marks the sheet	Perforates
Paperclip, BR-02 standard	12	Yes	Indentation; corrosion mark at 11 weeks bare	No
Paperclip, BR-04 reinforced	28	Yes	Indentation, deeper	No
Binder clip, 19 mm jaw	45	Yes	Two parallel creases, permanent	No
Binder clip, 32 mm jaw	120	Yes	Two parallel creases, permanent	No
Staple, 24/6	20	No, not without damage	Two holes and a crimp	Yes
Treasury tag, 51 mm	90	Yes	None beyond the existing punch holes	Requires prior punching

The figures for the clips are the Institute's own, taken from the holding-capacity trial, in which failure is defined as permanent set beyond 0.5 mm. The binder and staple figures are from a smaller series — 60 units of each — run in April 2026 under the same definition, and the Institute states plainly that 60 units is a thin basis for a published figure.

The property that actually decides

Buyers compare capacity. Capacity is rarely the constraint. Three properties decide the choice in practice and only one of them appears on any packet:

Whether the join must be undone. A staple cannot be removed without damage to the sheet at the crimp. Everything else can.
Whether the paper may be marked. A binder clip leaves two parallel creases that do not recover; the Institute measured them still visible at 18 months on all 60 units.
Whether the join must survive handling. A clip slides off. In a trial of 120 clipped bundles dropped once from 800 mm, 34 separated. No binder clip separated; no stapled bundle separated; three treasury tags came unthreaded.

Capacity is on the packet. None of the three above is.

What each device is actually for

Paperclip: A temporary join in a bundle that stays flat and stays put. Its virtue is that it does nothing permanent; its weakness is the same property. Not for transit, not for storage beyond a few weeks in humidity.
Binder clip: A join that must hold through handling, at the cost of a permanent crease. The 19 mm jaw covers the range where a reinforced clip is already marginal.
Staple: A join not intended to be undone. The only one of the four that is genuinely fixed, and the only one that perforates.
Treasury tag: A join through existing punch holes, for bundles too thick for anything else and for documents that must be leafed through in place. Requires punching, which is itself irreversible.

Where the comparison breaks down

Two of the four cannot be compared on the Institute's own figures, and the reason is worth stating rather than concealing. Holding capacity for a clip is measured to permanent deformation of the clip; for a staple it is measured to the point at which the crimp will no longer close. These are different failure events, and a single table that prints both in one column implies a comparison the method does not support. The figures above are given as measured and not as equivalents. The Institute's review panel has asked twice for the staple column to be removed, and it has been retained over that objection.

The archival case

For documents to be kept, the order of preference reverses. A staple corrodes in place and perforates; a bare clip marks in weeks; a binder clip creases. The practice recommended by the Institute and set out in the archival page is a sleeved clip or no fastener at all, and the second is preferred where the bundle can be housed flat.