this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by brbposting@sh.itjust.works to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
 

alt-textIt blows our hivemind that the United States doesn't use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).

Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America's little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:

The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram

[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]

ISO 216 A series papers formats

AO

A1

A3

A5

A7

A6

Et.

A4

Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We're not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.

Source: Financial Times

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[โ€“] kakes@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Tbf, I can see the use case for some "non-standard" sizes, like Legal, where having more height to the page without the extra width might be useful for readability of long documents.

...can't think of an excuse for the rest, though.

[โ€“] alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 months ago (7 children)

As a European, I do appreciate Legal as a format.

It just happens slightly too often that an A4 is not long enough and the last bit, including the signature, goes to the next page.

I wish Legal was common here. Or perhaps we could get a Long A4 with a third extra height or so.

The Letter format should just be replaced by A4 though.

[โ€“] grue@lemmy.world 33 points 5 months ago (6 children)

As a European, haven't you heard about the existence of the B and C series of paper sizes? It may not be exactly what you have in mind, but B4 paper is 250 x 353 mm (9.8 x 13.9 in) and C4 paper is 229 x 324 mm (9 x 12.8 in). There's also elongated A which is really long.

I hope you appreciate the irony of an American telling you about them.

[โ€“] alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

As your links explain, C series is used for envelopes, while B and elongated A are special case that aren't commonly used.

In any case, none of those series has an equivalent to American Letter.

The only paper that you will commonly find in European offices are A4 and (to a lesser extent) A3.

A big office printer might have 4 trays stocked with A4 and one tray with A3, for example.

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