Each time, colleagues rush to retrieve the bits of paper before waves suck them into the sea.

CNN: Stops and Starts

They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the house seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one room to another and looked at the bits of paper and string on the floors left over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and wished they had something to do.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Five Children and It'

Their work includes meeting arcane record-keeping requirements on workers' pay and conditions, and getting the right stamps on the right bits of paper for the sleepy customs service.

ECONOMIST: Life at the front line for an IT firm

They bounded in with the exuberance of puppies, strewing the mayor's jobs pledges around the chamber like bits of tissue paper.

BBC: Boris Johnson quizzed by London Assembly

As he watched bits of paper dancing with the effect of friction, he almost discovered electricity.

ECONOMIST: Isaac Newton

One machine uses hundreds of chips, each with 188 custom processors, to move 1.2 trillion bits a second, the printed-paper equivalent of 150 pickup truck loads.

FORBES: Oh My Guinness

They worry that, as long as the warehouse is left unscrutinised, Generali has ample opportunity to misplace uncomfortable bits of paper.

ECONOMIST: Insurance and the Holocaust

Under the fabric the curators found notebooks, newspapers, a letter, a small drawing, some community council papers and other bits of paper.

FORBES: Norway's 100-Year-Old Mystery Package Opened: Guess What Was Inside

Often the provincial governor's say-so is needed to obtain land, employment licences and a stack of other bits of paper a firm needs to operate.

ECONOMIST: Consumer goods