Is that the Philippines out there all alone?
Surprised that many countries use the US version
Canada almost switched in the 1970s, but lost its nerve
TBH, I thought they did use A4- seems to me the letters I got from BanQ in Quebec were A4
Quebec does things differently, often simply out of spite for the rest of the country. So I won’t be surprised if they have adopted A4 provincially
Oh, let’s also remember that A4 is a member of beautiful variant of an “SI system for paper”. Want a paper the size of an A4 folded double? We have A
85. Want something that folds perfectly to A4? A3. One more fold? A2.- Statement: “I want a piece of paper that I can fold twice to get exactly a US letter size.”
- Response: “You must be crazy.”
Edit: Did a fat-fingering
What’s the next step up after A0?
What on earth are you on about with those numbers? 😅
A0 is the base size, with an area of one square meter. Fold that in half and you get A1. Fold that in half and you get A2, and so on. Regular printer paper is A4. You’ll rarely, if ever, see sizes smaller than A6.
I fat-fingered the A5, otherwise the numbers were right?
I’m aware how the system works, I just wrote about it using A4 as the “base”. A3 is what you fold to get A4, A2 folds to give A3, etc.
I didn’t know A0 was exactly 1m2 though, TIL!
Want something that folds perfectly to A4? A3. One more fold? A2.
This made it sound like you meant that folding an A3 sheet twice gives A2 😅 Might just be my reading comprehension, though!
Nah, your reading comprehension is just fine, I just worded myself in a pretty verbal way. I totally get how it could be misread, I was thinking along the “salesman making a pitch” line:
“Want something that folds perfectly to A4? A3. Want an extra fold before you get there? We have A2!”
The print shop I worked at did everything at size C1, but they were a blueprint shop
american sizes do the same thing, just only five steps in ANSI sizes, and not really that well known outside of the industries that use the paper sizes, such as printing shops.
smallest being u.s. letter (A4 equivalent) is “ANSI A”, 8.5x11in…
largest being the full sheet (A0 equivalent) is “ANSI E”, 34x44in…
with the expected three steps between for B, C, and D.
going smaller than u.s. letter and ANSI A… letter halved (4.25x5.5in) ‘half letter’ is a common notepad and post card size; and halved again (2.12x2.75in) is a common label size.
The aspect ratio of the A series of paper is √2, so every doubling or halving of the size retains the same aspect ratio. If you want to save paper and print at half size, you can just do that and it works flawlessly. However doing it this way means very unmemorable decimal unit dimensions.
Half letter and tabloid are much taller than letter so you have to either have overly large margins on the top and bottom, or you have to reformat your document if you ever want to change the sizes.
Though specialty paper suppliers do sell 22x17 paper if you really want to double fold to get letter paper. 11x17 is twice the width of letter which works for printing bifold books in letter size. Its just the scaling aspect ratio thing. Sizes in multiples for bookmaking do exist in both systems.
And that’s how you choose a system over another,because it makes things easier
I’m American and have worked in corporate offices all my life and grew up around the printing industry.
A4/SI is super common here too. “Letter” is just something used by home users. But very often A4 is sold as “Letter A4” right next to the other paper.
Now “legal” print format is a true abomination and unfortunately is much less likely to be easily replaced.
I propose a new standard for printing.
Laser-etchable circular paper with 2 holes in middle which helps rotate it on a spindle, and hang it without unvanted rotation.
The printer will have a spindle with 2 prongs, and single axis movable laser assembly used to etch the paper as it spins.So like a vinyl record but made from paper?
Why circular paper?
n + 1 standards
Only used A sizes through my academic career. I know that was a long time ago but even going to stores they list a4/5 as sizes.
I’d argue 8.5" isn’t even used. Half an inch is 12.7mm, 8.5" ≈ 215.9mm. Most machines are calibrated using SI, so they’ll do ~216mm instead, and then what’s the point, just discard US Letter
So we could save some trees if we all agreed to one standard size??
No, but we could definitely save some trees if we had less papers and more online systems… providing they’re done correctly and not leaking around everyone’s data.
