Paper literature can be roughly divided into hemp paper literature, leather paper literature, bamboo paper literature and so on. Among them, paper documents include those written and printed with cotton paper, civilized paper, rice paper and cotton paper. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties in China, books were generally written in hemp paper. The Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties mainly used hemp paper to write and print books, and also used leather paper to print and write books. The Buddhist scriptures carved in Dunhuang mostly use hemp paper and leather paper. In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, books were printed with leather paper and bamboo paper, while in the Jin Dynasty, books were printed with hemp paper. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, bamboo paper was mostly used for printing books, followed by leather paper. Tissue paper was widely used before Wanli in Ming Dynasty, and bamboo paper prevailed after Wanli. There are many kinds of paper for printing books in Qing Dynasty, the best is Hua Kai paper, followed by Hua Kai list paper and Lian Mian paper. Hua Kai paper is mainly used in Neifu, Wuyingtang and Yangzhou Poetry Bureau. For example, in the fifth year of Yongzheng in the Qing Dynasty, the official version of "small notes" was white Hua Kai paper. Ordinary printed books are mostly made of bamboo paper. During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Xuan paper was mostly used for printing epigraphy, archaeology, printing spectrum, books and picture books. During the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties, books were also printed on the back of official documents and other old papers.

Since modern times, there have been printed newsprint for newspapers and periodicals, letterpress for general books, Bible paper for dictionaries, offset paper for colorful printed materials such as pictorial, artistic pictures and exquisite books and periodicals, coated paper for beautifully printed books, colorful pictorial, yearbook, printed forms, account books and other printed materials, typed paper, photocopied reports, vouchers and so on. Paper documents are more colorful. Although there are many non-paper documents in the 20th century, paper documents will still be the main form of human communication and dissemination of knowledge and information because of their convenience and practicality.

Paper documents can be divided into paper documents, printed documents and Braille publications according to the way of recording knowledge. Among them, there are many kinds of printed documents, including block printing documents, movable type printing documents, lithograph documents, machine typesetting documents, photographic photocopying documents, computer typesetting documents, three-dimensional printing pictures and so on.