17 ms·

International Standard Paper Sizes

82 points by polm23 6y ago

alister 6y ago
> The Legal format itself is quite rarely used, the notion that it is for “legal” work is a popular myth; the vast majority of U.S. legal documents are actually using the “Letter” format. Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.? In Canada at least, lawyers often use a paper size even longer than legal format. It makes photocopying a huge pain because the glass plate isn’t long enough on ordinary copiers, and these extra long sheets don’t fit in standard file cabinets without folding, and forget about using binders. Nobody uses these ridiculous extra long sheets except (Canadian) lawyers.
- jerbs 6y ago
  Not a lawyer, but have worked with lawyers in a law firm and government offices. Everywhere I worked did almost all legal work in letter format. I occasionally saw legal paper, but no more commonly than in non-law offices.
- polm23 6y ago
  My father was a lawyer and I was in his office a lot growing up. I'm pretty sure printed documents were always letter size, so they could fit in normal filing cabinets and folders. Growing up the in the US the only place I ever saw legal-size paper was legal pads.
- polm23 6y ago
  So looking around more, this is interesting - historically US lawyers did use legal size, but in 1983 the Supreme Court instituted a rule to move all federal paperwork to letter size, and most states followed shortly thereafter if they hadn't already transitioned. https://www.michbar.org/file/generalinfo/plainenglish/pdfs/89_july.pdf https://www.michbar.org/file/generalinfo/plainenglish/pdfs/8...
- ardy42 6y ago
  >> The Legal format itself is quite rarely used, the notion that it is for “legal” work is a popular myth; the vast majority of U.S. legal documents are actually using the “Letter” format. > Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.? I kinda randomly look at scans of trial court documents sometimes, and I don't think I've seen one that looked like it was printed on legal paper (but I've hardly been systematic and my sample has been minuscule). However, all the printers at my office are stocked with legal size paper, and I sometimes would use it for printing diagrams were I needed a little more space to get everything to fit or tables that were a little wide (but not so wide that I needed to use tabloid paper). My mortgage statements from my bank legal size, as are my property tax notices.
- gumby 6y ago
  It's still used in real estate and quite a few lawyers still use legal-sized handwriting pads, but otherwise to me it seems to be dead.
mark-r 6y ago
This is a very thorough explanation of what I consider a brilliant paper size standard. What genius to make the aspect ratio identical for each size, and to create smaller variants by cutting the larger one exactly in half. There are two places where you can tell it's a bit dated though. The first is in declaring the TV aspect ratio as 4:3; it's just about universally 16:9 now. The second is the expectation that the U.S. would be converting to metric, that becomes less likely with every passing year.
- wrp 6y ago
  I'd argue that the International Standard Paper Sizes system is a case where a clever idea has been promoted beyond what is beneficial. There are a lot of use cases where the standard sizes are not optimal. I personally find the US Letter size handier than the A4, and 3x5 inch is vastly more convenient than A6 for index cards and pocket memo books. In Japan, most "B5" notebooks I see are actually considerably off standard in the measurements.
  - teambayleaf 6y ago
    Japan's "B5" originated from the official paper size in Edo-Tokugawa era. So it has quite a bit of history, and IMO it's handier than ISO papers. A fun fact is that "letter" size is pretty much hated in Asian countries. Since many poorly-internationalized softwares choose "letter" as the default printing size, while its usage is virtually zero there.
    - tasogare 6y ago
      Yet in Japan there is a crazy number of different paper size and color, especially all the various slips used for bills and by the administration. The "post card bill" is also particularly annoying since once opened they don’t get flat again.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      "Letter" size is only used in the USA, Canada and (sometimes) Mexico. It's not just east Asia that can be annoyed by American defaults, but the whole world.
systemvoltage 6y ago
One of the things I keep hearing from non-Americans is how dumb Americans are and then proceed to explaining the benefits of the metric system. I see this from random internet forums to Youtube comments, from news paper articles to talking to people in Europe. What people don't realize is that America is like a giant ship that has a ton of inertia to change. It is the world's largest economy with huge diversity of evolved shit that has piled up. It is difficult to clean it despite of the will. The US gov tried to convert America to the metric system unsuccessfully [1]. The US (NIST) in collaboration with international bodies lead the redefinition of SI units based on fundamental constants [2]. Furthermore, semiconductor industry, university labs, medical industry, etc. all use ISO standards and the metric system. The US semiconductor industry alone is larger than the GDP of Switzerland. I studied engineering in America and we used the metric system throughout with some problems in ANSI units for familiarization of the units - ultimately, the engineer needs to adapt to the company's unit system and not try to be a thorn. I personally am tired of the rest of the world patronizingly explaining the advantages of the metric system to Americans - over and over. It is not that difficult of a concept and most technical people, engineers I know in the US already understand the benefits of the metric system. It is mildly annoying at best and condescending at worst. If we are in the unit system mess, there are a lot of things that still do not follow base-10 based units. For example, font type units (points) from Switzerland. Or the way we measure time. How come there aren't 10/100th units of a minute/hour commonly used around the world? A second is split into 1000 milliseconds but a minute is not split into 1000 seconds. Why this inconsistency? Why 360 degrees? If we didn't have 10 fingers, the entire decimal system is worse than base 12 or duodecimal system [3]. The problems faced by America are exactly the same type of problems if we want to convert the entire world to duodecimal system. It is next to impossible despite of clear advantages. Note that I am not defending the people that arrogantly want to stick to status quo - there are certainly people like that in the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_base_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_ba... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal
- msla 6y ago
  Another thing is that a large portion of the "metric" world isn't fully metric, using old-fashioned units like miles and pyeong and tsubo. Really, the whole metric vs non-metric debate comes down to how much non-metric people see in their daily lives, not any binary distinction between "always use metric" and "never use metric" or anything of the sort.
seven4 6y ago
Digging around on the same page i stumbled into this which i think is a fun/interesting look at the history..though sounds like the ratio was in use even before its referenced here. Anyone know more about it? "letter, written in 1786-10-25 by the physics professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (University of Göttingen, Germany, 1742–1799) to Johann Beckmann, seems to be the oldest preserved written reference to the idea of using the square-root of two as an aspect ratio for paper formats" Excerpt of the English Translation - "I once gave an exercise to a young Englishman, whom I taught in algebra, to find a sheet of paper for which all formats forma patens, folio, 4to, 8, 16, are similar to each other. Having found that ratio, I wanted to apply it to an available sheet of ordinary writing paper with scissors, but found with pleasure, that it already had it. It is the paper on which I write this letter, but to which, because since by cutting some of its original form may have been lost, I also add an uncut original. The short side of the rectangle must relate to the large one like 1 : √2, or like the side of a square to its diagonal. This form has something pleasant and distinguished before the ordinary [form]. Are these rules given to the paper makers or has this form spread through tradition? Where does this form come from, which appears not to have emerged by accident? Honoured wellborn forgive me this freedom." https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/lichtenberg-letter.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/lichtenberg-letter.html
app4soft 6y ago
> ISO 216 defines the A series of paper sizes based on these simple principles: > - The height divided by the width of all formats is the square root of two (1.4142). > - Format A0 has an area of one square meter. When we look on A0 papers on the market mostly it's size is 841 mm × 1189 mm, that is not correspond to this standard: - Length Ratio: 1189/841 = 1.41379310345 (should be 1.4142) - Area: 0.999949 m² (should be 1.0 m²) P.S. There are few websites which are useful for retrieving various paper formats sizes.[0,1] [0] https://www.papersize.org/a-paper-sizes.htm https://www.papersize.org/a-paper-sizes.htm [1] https://papersizes.io/a/ https://papersizes.io/a/
- jeddy3 6y ago
  > The standardized height and width of the paper formats is a rounded number of millimeters. The "rules" was five simple points, you can't just ignore the ones that doesn't suit your argumentation.
- function_seven 6y ago
  > - Area: 0.999949 m² (should be 1.0 m²) And it is! I mean, if you're not going to use an electron microscope to measure it :) The real measurements should be 840.9mm x 1189.2mm, but I'll forgive them for the rounding.
  - occamrazor 6y ago
    All paper sizes are rounded to the mm and the rounding is always down, so that is is possible to get two A(n+1) sheet by cutting one An sheet.
    - jwilk 6y ago
      It would be 840, not 841, if rounded down. Wikipedia says you should add 0.2 mm before rounding down (which gives you the expected 841), but it doesn't explain where that number comes from.
      - brmgb 6y ago
kkylin 6y ago
https://xkcd.com/2322/ https://xkcd.com/2322/
- mark-r 6y ago
  11/8.5 = pi/4?
terakhirx 6y ago
I feel there are something missing. B0, C0, A0, ..., B1, C1, A1, ..., B2, C2, A2, ... . How about make "D series"? B0, C0, A0, "D0", B1, C1, A1, "D1", B2, C2, A2, "D2", ... .
hannibalhorn 6y ago
> Based on the experience from the introduction of ISO paper formats in other industrialized countries at various points during the 20th century, it becomes clear that this process needs to be initiated by a political decision to move all government operation to the new paper format system. History shows that the commercial world then gradually and smoothly adopts the new government standard for office paper within about 10–15 years. The article is obviously dated, but at this point that'd be such a waste of time and resources. Government has to be focused on digitization and paperless/electronic processes, ideally getting rid of photocopiers instead of upgrading them. Had never heard the logic behind the ISO paper sizes before though, very cool!
emj 6y ago
From 1996, the one from 1999 is not that different though. https://web.archive.org/web/19990129003006/http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990129003006/http://www.cl.cam...

82 points by polm23 6y ago

> The Legal format itself is quite rarely used, the notion that it is for “legal” work is a popular myth; the vast majority of U.S. legal documents are actually using the “Letter” format. Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.? In Canada at least, lawyers often use a paper size even longer than legal format. It makes photocopying a huge pain because the glass plate isn’t long enough on ordinary copiers, and these extra long sheets don’t fit in standard file cabinets without folding, and forget about using binders. Nobody uses these ridiculous extra long sheets except (Canadian) lawyers.

jerbs 6y ago
Not a lawyer, but have worked with lawyers in a law firm and government offices. Everywhere I worked did almost all legal work in letter format. I occasionally saw legal paper, but no more commonly than in non-law offices.
polm23 6y ago
My father was a lawyer and I was in his office a lot growing up. I'm pretty sure printed documents were always letter size, so they could fit in normal filing cabinets and folders. Growing up the in the US the only place I ever saw legal-size paper was legal pads.
polm23 6y ago
So looking around more, this is interesting - historically US lawyers did use legal size, but in 1983 the Supreme Court instituted a rule to move all federal paperwork to letter size, and most states followed shortly thereafter if they hadn't already transitioned. https://www.michbar.org/file/generalinfo/plainenglish/pdfs/89_july.pdf https://www.michbar.org/file/generalinfo/plainenglish/pdfs/8...
ardy42 6y ago
>> The Legal format itself is quite rarely used, the notion that it is for “legal” work is a popular myth; the vast majority of U.S. legal documents are actually using the “Letter” format. > Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.? I kinda randomly look at scans of trial court documents sometimes, and I don't think I've seen one that looked like it was printed on legal paper (but I've hardly been systematic and my sample has been minuscule). However, all the printers at my office are stocked with legal size paper, and I sometimes would use it for printing diagrams were I needed a little more space to get everything to fit or tables that were a little wide (but not so wide that I needed to use tabloid paper). My mortgage statements from my bank legal size, as are my property tax notices.
gumby 6y ago
It's still used in real estate and quite a few lawyers still use legal-sized handwriting pads, but otherwise to me it seems to be dead.

mark-r 6y ago

This is a very thorough explanation of what I consider a brilliant paper size standard. What genius to make the aspect ratio identical for each size, and to create smaller variants by cutting the larger one exactly in half. There are two places where you can tell it's a bit dated though. The first is in declaring the TV aspect ratio as 4:3; it's just about universally 16:9 now. The second is the expectation that the U.S. would be converting to metric, that becomes less likely with every passing year.

wrp 6y ago
I'd argue that the International Standard Paper Sizes system is a case where a clever idea has been promoted beyond what is beneficial. There are a lot of use cases where the standard sizes are not optimal. I personally find the US Letter size handier than the A4, and 3x5 inch is vastly more convenient than A6 for index cards and pocket memo books. In Japan, most "B5" notebooks I see are actually considerably off standard in the measurements.
- teambayleaf 6y ago
  Japan's "B5" originated from the official paper size in Edo-Tokugawa era. So it has quite a bit of history, and IMO it's handier than ISO papers. A fun fact is that "letter" size is pretty much hated in Asian countries. Since many poorly-internationalized softwares choose "letter" as the default printing size, while its usage is virtually zero there.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    Yet in Japan there is a crazy number of different paper size and color, especially all the various slips used for bills and by the administration. The "post card bill" is also particularly annoying since once opened they don’t get flat again.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    "Letter" size is only used in the USA, Canada and (sometimes) Mexico. It's not just east Asia that can be annoyed by American defaults, but the whole world.

systemvoltage 6y ago

One of the things I keep hearing from non-Americans is how dumb Americans are and then proceed to explaining the benefits of the metric system. I see this from random internet forums to Youtube comments, from news paper articles to talking to people in Europe. What people don't realize is that America is like a giant ship that has a ton of inertia to change. It is the world's largest economy with huge diversity of evolved shit that has piled up. It is difficult to clean it despite of the will. The US gov tried to convert America to the metric system unsuccessfully [1]. The US (NIST) in collaboration with international bodies lead the redefinition of SI units based on fundamental constants [2]. Furthermore, semiconductor industry, university labs, medical industry, etc. all use ISO standards and the metric system. The US semiconductor industry alone is larger than the GDP of Switzerland. I studied engineering in America and we used the metric system throughout with some problems in ANSI units for familiarization of the units - ultimately, the engineer needs to adapt to the company's unit system and not try to be a thorn. I personally am tired of the rest of the world patronizingly explaining the advantages of the metric system to Americans - over and over. It is not that difficult of a concept and most technical people, engineers I know in the US already understand the benefits of the metric system. It is mildly annoying at best and condescending at worst. If we are in the unit system mess, there are a lot of things that still do not follow base-10 based units. For example, font type units (points) from Switzerland. Or the way we measure time. How come there aren't 10/100th units of a minute/hour commonly used around the world? A second is split into 1000 milliseconds but a minute is not split into 1000 seconds. Why this inconsistency? Why 360 degrees? If we didn't have 10 fingers, the entire decimal system is worse than base 12 or duodecimal system [3]. The problems faced by America are exactly the same type of problems if we want to convert the entire world to duodecimal system. It is next to impossible despite of clear advantages. Note that I am not defending the people that arrogantly want to stick to status quo - there are certainly people like that in the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_base_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_ba... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal

msla 6y ago
Another thing is that a large portion of the "metric" world isn't fully metric, using old-fashioned units like miles and pyeong and tsubo. Really, the whole metric vs non-metric debate comes down to how much non-metric people see in their daily lives, not any binary distinction between "always use metric" and "never use metric" or anything of the sort.

seven4 6y ago

Digging around on the same page i stumbled into this which i think is a fun/interesting look at the history..though sounds like the ratio was in use even before its referenced here. Anyone know more about it? "letter, written in 1786-10-25 by the physics professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (University of Göttingen, Germany, 1742–1799) to Johann Beckmann, seems to be the oldest preserved written reference to the idea of using the square-root of two as an aspect ratio for paper formats" Excerpt of the English Translation - "I once gave an exercise to a young Englishman, whom I taught in algebra, to find a sheet of paper for which all formats forma patens, folio, 4to, 8, 16, are similar to each other. Having found that ratio, I wanted to apply it to an available sheet of ordinary writing paper with scissors, but found with pleasure, that it already had it. It is the paper on which I write this letter, but to which, because since by cutting some of its original form may have been lost, I also add an uncut original. The short side of the rectangle must relate to the large one like 1 : √2, or like the side of a square to its diagonal. This form has something pleasant and distinguished before the ordinary [form]. Are these rules given to the paper makers or has this form spread through tradition? Where does this form come from, which appears not to have emerged by accident? Honoured wellborn forgive me this freedom." https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/lichtenberg-letter.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/lichtenberg-letter.html

app4soft 6y ago

> ISO 216 defines the A series of paper sizes based on these simple principles: > - The height divided by the width of all formats is the square root of two (1.4142). > - Format A0 has an area of one square meter. When we look on A0 papers on the market mostly it's size is 841 mm × 1189 mm, that is not correspond to this standard: - Length Ratio: 1189/841 = 1.41379310345 (should be 1.4142) - Area: 0.999949 m² (should be 1.0 m²) P.S. There are few websites which are useful for retrieving various paper formats sizes.[0,1] [0] https://www.papersize.org/a-paper-sizes.htm https://www.papersize.org/a-paper-sizes.htm [1] https://papersizes.io/a/ https://papersizes.io/a/

jeddy3 6y ago
> The standardized height and width of the paper formats is a rounded number of millimeters. The "rules" was five simple points, you can't just ignore the ones that doesn't suit your argumentation.
function_seven 6y ago
> - Area: 0.999949 m² (should be 1.0 m²) And it is! I mean, if you're not going to use an electron microscope to measure it :) The real measurements should be 840.9mm x 1189.2mm, but I'll forgive them for the rounding.
- occamrazor 6y ago
  All paper sizes are rounded to the mm and the rounding is always down, so that is is possible to get two A(n+1) sheet by cutting one An sheet.
  - jwilk 6y ago
    It would be 840, not 841, if rounded down. Wikipedia says you should add 0.2 mm before rounding down (which gives you the expected 841), but it doesn't explain where that number comes from.
    - brmgb 6y ago

kkylin 6y ago

https://xkcd.com/2322/ https://xkcd.com/2322/

mark-r 6y ago
11/8.5 = pi/4?

terakhirx 6y ago

I feel there are something missing. B0, C0, A0, ..., B1, C1, A1, ..., B2, C2, A2, ... . How about make "D series"? B0, C0, A0, "D0", B1, C1, A1, "D1", B2, C2, A2, "D2", ... .

hannibalhorn 6y ago

> Based on the experience from the introduction of ISO paper formats in other industrialized countries at various points during the 20th century, it becomes clear that this process needs to be initiated by a political decision to move all government operation to the new paper format system. History shows that the commercial world then gradually and smoothly adopts the new government standard for office paper within about 10–15 years. The article is obviously dated, but at this point that'd be such a waste of time and resources. Government has to be focused on digitization and paperless/electronic processes, ideally getting rid of photocopiers instead of upgrading them. Had never heard the logic behind the ISO paper sizes before though, very cool!

emj 6y ago

From 1996, the one from 1999 is not that different though. https://web.archive.org/web/19990129003006/http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990129003006/http://www.cl.cam...