Standard Paper Size

8.5x11 is all that matters. Everything else is horseshit.

This should’ve been a poll.

People don't chat if they can vote.

I do a lot of business with Europe; so, A4 is my lot whether I like it or not. Now can we discuss the European two ring binders vs American three ring binders?

[quote]So, why exactly is “U.S. Letter” exactly 8.5 by 11 inches? We have to go back over four hundred years, a time where it is said that North American forests were so thick that a squirrel could get from Niagara Falls to the Atlantic Ocean without touching the ground. We also have to cross that ocean, to the Netherlands. The Dutch invented the two-sheet mold for papermaking in the 1660s. Apparently, the average maximum stretch of a vatman’s arms was 44″. In terms of depth, many molds were around 17″ front-to-back because the laid lines and watermarks had to run from left to right. So, to maximize the efficiency of papermaking, the Dutch molded 44” x 17” sheets…which cut down nicely to eight 8.5″ x 11″ pieces of paper: just right to pen a personal request for more double salt licorice.

Legal is very inconvenient.

I like the slender look of A4, but those 2-ring euro binders with the finger hole in the spine ain’t shit. You really need a 3-hole punch for proper binding and for ease of turning.

A4 is A-OK!

A4 is superior. UK magazine format (also euro?) is also better; pictures look nicer.

A4 is weird, as are two-ring binders. USA all the way!

[quote] You really need a 3-hole punch for proper binding and for ease of turning.

The lady’s not for turning!

[quote] with the finger hole in the spine ain’t shit.

Is that last word a verb?

A3 is bigger.

The width and length measurements of A4 and all the other A-class paper sizes are not divisible by ten. This seems un-European though. They prefer things be measured in fifths and tenths, not thirds, eighths, twelfths and what have you.

"a squirrel could get from Niagara Falls to the Atlantic Ocean without touching the ground"

It still can if it's got the money for the Bell JetRanger Helicopter from the Falls eastbound.

[quote] A3 is bigger.

Judge it by its size do you?

I use A4. But I lived much if my life under the 8.5" x 11" order.

I use the metric system in Europe. Previously I used Customary and Imperial measurement systems

In the UK and Ireland, I drive in the left-hand side. Everywhere else that I have travelled, driving has been on the right-hand side

I use Celsius or Fahrenheit temperatures depending on with whom I'm speaking

So fucking what? Where's the confusion? The difficulty? The "problem" of using different systems?

It's not so difficult.

[quote]NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.

-September 30, 1999

It's rocket science, R17.

I used to have to meet monthly with clients, and would print out their pending project reports landscape on legal paper. The spreadsheets were too wide to fit on A4 or letter. I don't meet with them in person anymore (thank you COVID!!) but I still have a buttload of legal paper in the house. Legal is the only printer paper I have in the house

A4 is golden.

A4 is ideal for printing "2-up" 8.5x11pdfs (2 pages on 1, rotated & printed side by side). When you print 2-up 8.5x11 ON 8.5x11 or 8.5x14, there a lot of wasted whitespace. With A4, 8.5x11 scales down nicely after rotation to mostly fill half of an A4 page.

R17, the difficulty is that A4 paper does not work with US office supplies and the A4 office supplies are exorbitantly expensive in the USA.

R22, that's understandable, but why not just print A4 formatted content onto 8.5x11 paper at a small % reduction or do a scale/fit adjustment?

In Russia we back to using parchment. Is ok, buts sticks in printer. Printer has no ink. We use secret Coca-Cola formula to make Russian ink. Life in Russia

My printer defaults to legal whenever I scan something. I wanna slap the bitch silly.

In the A series there exists no size between A4 (equivalent to US Letter size) and A3 (equivalent to US Tabloid size 11” x 17”). There is no Legal size paper, which comes in handy for spreadsheets.

R23, because I get hard copies from Europe and I am not going to waste the ink, paper, and my time to scan the document, reduce it, and print it again.

Schishe queens

^ Lizscha, if you didn't keep spilling your vodka on the printer you wouldn't have so many problems with paper jams

I tried to satirize the lazy "what are people's thoughts?..." threads, about nothing and nobodies, cluttering DL these days, by choosing the most mundane topic imaginable. Voila, it got responses!

^ Actually this is a topic most people can relate to which makes it infinitely more interesting then many of the DL "threads about nothing"