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Archive (2000-2001)

Post-it notes: a sticky habit

By Mary Deardeuff

maryd@newsroom.byu.edu

They are not just little, yellow and square anymore.

Post-it notes have stuck around since they were introduced as little, yellow and square in the mid-'70s. Today they are available in 29 different colors, 56 shapes and 27 sizes.

Bethani Jensen, 22, a junior from Aberdeen, Ore., majoring in psychology, uses post-it notes all the time at her job in the Harman Continuing Education Building.

Jensen is a proofreader and an editor of BYU Independent Study courses, so she said she needs eye-catching colors of post-it notes to mark mistakes in a course so they can be found quickly.

'I love post-it notes,' Jensen said. 'Sometimes I look at all these pretty colors and think of what I could do with all of them.'

Jensen is not the only one who is enthralled with post-it notes.

'They're great. I like the florescent ones,' said Brooke Jeppson, a junior from Richland, Wash., majoring in nursing. Jeppson works at the BYU Bookstore, which has a whole aisle dedicated to post-it notes.

Suzanne Hair, another employee of the BYU Bookstore, said, 'I always get people asking me for post-it notes.'

Hair said most of the students who want to buy post-it notes usually look pretty busy, and are in too much of a hurry to look for the aisle themselves but would rather ask her to show it to them quickly.

Keith Winter, a manager at Officemax in Provo, said he noticed the same thing. Most of the people who buy post-it notes are business people, but they seem unorganized and often scatterbrained, he said.

'Post-it notes are the opposite of a Franklin Planner,' Winter said. 'They aren't very portable.'

He said he personally doesn't use them, although his store does have a big selection.

Could something weird ever happen with post-it notes?

'You never know,' Winter said.

But Jensen said, 'I think I'll propose to my husband on a post-it note.'

For more information on post-it notes, visit their Web site at www.3M.com/post-it/.