8 ms·

A4 is so ubiquitous around me (Europe) that, no matter its merits or not, it's really a major PITA when you get documents that are not A4. They don't line up n

A4 is so ubiquitous around me (Europe) that, no matter its merits or not, it's really a major PITA when you get documents that are not A4. They don't line up nicely with the A4 stuff. They don't go gently in the A4 folders / sleeves / pockets / ring binders (files) / etc. Typical offenders in my case are medical bills printed on dot-matrix printers. I don't even know if there's perforated continuous stationery/form paper with tractor holes that, once you strip the holes, is A4 sized? I guess it's really uncommon if it exists for I don't ever recall seeing any actually used. Now don't get me wrong: hearing the song of a dot-matrix printer makes me happy (brings back lots of memories as my first printer was a dot-matrix one) and it's nice that that tech is still in use here and there. I just wish the dot-matrix printers in Europe would use A4 continuous paper (which may or may not even exist). And don't get me started on oversized continuous paper that is not perforated: this is the kind of stuff that can trigger obsessive-compulsive disorder! I guess all this rant to say that even in Europe, where A4 is ubiquitous, you still have places using other sizes than A3/A4/A5 etc.

Ayesh 4y ago
I had this problem too, with majority of documents being A4, but a single bank/med bill ruins the rest of the stack. My solution was to just give up on keeping the documents unless I have to, for legal/tax purposes, and just digitally archive them. Modern scanner apps are super good, and the OCR/search features make the 20 seconds it takes to scan it and throw away the paper.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Honest question: why do you archive things you don’t have to archive?
  - jxf 4y ago
    For me it's a "you never know" situation. The cost of being wrong about this can be very high.
  - Ayesh 4y ago
    For easier searching and sometimes nostalgic reasons. When I was in my early 20s, I used to save ticket stubs, boarding passes, train tickets, etc when I was traveling, I really liked keeping them. But when I saw myself becoming a borderline hoarder, I took photos of them and threw all of them away. Even today, I have the habit of taking a document image of ticket stubs and other new things, specially when I'm in a new city or a country. There is no practical use for them, just that they help me to not stack up physical papers. The other real documents I archive are mostly documents related to dividend notices, water/electricity bills that unfortunately come in snail mail, etc. I'd be fine if I don't keep them, but I have them in the very unlikely scenario that I just might need to make a paper trail.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I have a bunch of stuff I wish I could easily digitize and throw away the originals. But, aside from doing a few selective things, the effort to en masse digitize and add enough metadata so I could actually find stuff isn't worth the return.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        For some people "please provide evidence of your previous travel history" is something to worry about. Will they accept digitalized version? Who knows!
        ghaff 4y ago
        I would have absolutely no systematic record of my travel history outside of stamps in a passport and TripIt.
        throwaway290 4y ago
        Passports tend to get lost, and replacement won't have the stamps. Whether this matters for you mostly depends on your citizenship.
  - usefulcat 4y ago
    Not the parent but: because you often don't know with certainty whether a particular document will be needed at some point in the future. Edit: Concrete example: I'll probably never get audited by the IRS, but if I ever do, I really really want to have all the records I need to defend myself.
    - bradknowles 4y ago
      For the IRS, you only need to keep documents seven years back. Anything older than seven years can be shredded.
      - copperx 4y ago
        So everybody must keep 7 years of archives? Is that why houses in the US are so big? And does everybody have an archival room? Or does the IRS accept scans? So many questions.
        nicoburns 4y ago
        How many documents do you have??? Surely one smallish box would do for most people?
        bradknowles 4y ago
        Some people, yes. Others, no. As your finances get more complex, and you change employers more often, and you have more 401k plans that are distributed around various companies, and you have multiple credit cards, etc... then your storage requirements will necessarily increase.
        ghaff 4y ago
        Essentially all such records are available online. In any case, a file cabinet is almost certainly sufficient if you want to save a few years of printed copies.
  - jdeibele 4y ago
    My mother kept the first utility bill of the year for electricity, natural gas, water and sewer, etc. She lived in the same house for 42 years and liked to be able to see how much the amounts had changed over the years. I’m not sure it was tremendously useful but she could verify her feeling that water and sewer increased disproportionately to the others, for example.
    - copperx 4y ago
      How does she remember to do that every year? That's amazing.
  - ColinWright 4y ago
    How do you know you don't need to archive it? Recently a colleague needed to provide 20 years of details of addresses lived and trips overseas made in order to complete various immigration forms. Governments can change their demands at their whim. If you don't have the documents, you're screwed.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I guess it happens but, while I've lived in the same house for many years, I wouldn't remotely have any real proof of overseas travel except for passport stamps and whatever is recorded in TripIt (which I assume wouldn't constitute proof). We're taking dozens and dozens of trips. I suspect very few people save that type of information unless they know in advance they'll need it.
      - ColinWright 4y ago
        If you never move, and certainly never travel between countries, then you are probably OK. But honestly, you don't know. Governments can and do change the laws when it suits them. Here's another specific example. It's not just the initial tweet, you can see example after example in the discussion: https://twitter.com/OmidVEbrahimi/status/1558024348132327424 https://twitter.com/OmidVEbrahimi/status/1558024348132327424 You're not in the same position, I assume you were born in the USA. But do you really trust the Government not to change the laws? And what if you want to accept a contract or employment in another country? How much would you need to have archived in those circumstances? Are you sure? Personally, having lived and worked in four countries, I archive pretty much everything.
- jopsen 4y ago
  I have box that papers I need to keep goes into. The theory is that it's highly unlikely that I'll ever need to produce/find the papers every again. So if I have to, I'll pay the cost of sorting and organizing the papers when that day comes. Kind of like lazy evaluation in Haskell :)
twic 4y ago
> I don't even know if there's perforated continuous stationery/form paper with tractor holes that, once you strip the holes, is A4 sized? There is. We had an ImageWriter in the 1980s which printed on exactly that. Until i read your comment, i assumed that was the standard! This format still exists, for example: https://www.paperstone.co.uk/paper/listing-paper-computer/5-star-computer-listing-paper-1-part-a4-11-66-inch-x-235mm-microperforated-plain-white-box-2000-sheets/p-25779 https://www.paperstone.co.uk/paper/listing-paper-computer/5-...
- bonzini 4y ago
  Technically it's 0.66 millimeter shorter than A4. A bigger problem is width, it does not fit the "standard" 80 columns.
- gertrunde 4y ago
  That paper does make me irrationally angry for one reason: "Sheet size is A4 - 11.66inch deep x 235mm wide (edge to edge including sprockets)" (Edit: Although it does make a sort of sense, in that dot matrix line height is in inches - but still aggravating).
bonzini 4y ago
The line height of a dot matrix printer is 1/6", so A4 continuous paper would be roughly 70 lines but not quite exactly 70. Breaks would be messed up after a few pages. It would also not fit 80 characters horizontally. That's why continuous paper is stuck with US letter or 14"x11" format.
justinlloyd 4y ago
I am sure someone has already pointed this out, but there is indeed A4 sized tractor paper. Old person irrelevant anecdote, in the days before affordable high resolution inkjets laser printers, 9-pin dot matrix, 24-pin dot matrix and daisywheel/golfball printers ruled the world. Submitting coursework in college was required to be on A4 paper, and if you used a dot matrix printer you lost marks too. Some of my college professors, even on my computer science undergrad were so stuck in their ways that they demanded you type everything up on a manual typewriter and would penalize you if they thought you had done it on a computer. College students were lazy, so everybody would use the college's 9-pin dot matrix printer (losing points) and then mad dash for the single guillotine cutter in the adminstration's office like they were French royalty in 1789. I special ordered very expensive A4 tractor feed paper, and bought a second-hand daisy wheel printer that nobody wanted because daisy wheels didn't do graphics, and typed everything up on a computer. No lost points, no lining up to use the guillotine, no mad dash at the end. But yeah, places using sizes other than A4, screw those guys.
- bborud 4y ago
  I would suspect the software was written for a non-A4 format, so if you were to put A4 paper in it you might get line wraps that would screw up multi-page prints. Oh my, I just remembered the pain of setting the perforation skip when using nonstandard paper. And then realizing that those problems were a luxury compared to the problems big professional office printers throw up today.
  - justinlloyd 4y ago
    That satisfying tearing of the perforated tractor feed edges. And the not so satisyfing tear when you tried to do too many at once because you were in a hurry. Wide format tractor fed music paper in green. I had tractor fed graph paper for a while. If you want to know frustration, try lining up your DnD game maps to that... And I had forgotten about the perforation skip/misalignment. Thanks for bringing that back. Triggered.
- samstave 4y ago
  IDEA: Someone please make a "white noise" generator that play audio of old computer 'whirring' noises... like a dot matrix printer, a fax machine, a modem, etc... that plays low-key in the background... I actually miss the sound of a dot-matrix.
copperx 4y ago
I'm still waiting for the US to convert from letter size to A4. The change feels imminent, but for some reason it hasn't happened yet. Maybe we need to convert to the metric system first?
- ihuman 4y ago
  Why does it feel imminent?
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    Honestly it's a lot easier to have bespoke paper sizes now, because (a) it's not like we're actually using paper for much and (b) you can just set your computer to whatever.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      And 90% of the time professional printers are going to be printing to huge sheets and cutting it down anyway.
    - slowmovintarget 4y ago
      I'm one of those fountain pen oddballs to whom paper is very important. A4 and A5 notebooks for me, please.
      - hilbert42 4y ago
        Same here. Off topic, or I'd discuss my fountain pen collection.
        flkiwi 4y ago
        By which you mean “addiction” if my desk is anything to go by.
        slowmovintarget 4y ago
samstave 4y ago
Back in my day, I had a CTO that required I | the messages log to the line printer.... Each day I would have to review the log for any security breaches with a highlighter and investigate any attempts to break our system... Yeah, that sucked. (we were one of the first VOIP people...) ((Quicknet))
Diesel555 4y ago
>They don't line up nicely with the A4 stuff. They don't go gently in the A4 folders / sleeves / pockets / ring binders (files) / etc. This statement, and the rest of the post, simply reads "I don't like different". However, the article is about the mathematical benefits of A4, the failures of 8.5x11, and the true benefit of A4 from a paper-size agnostic society. This article convinced A4 is better (and the entire system) not because it doesn't fit in my folders, but because it makes practical sense.
- personalidea 4y ago
  It has practical implications. I have a file cabinet which is made for A4 paper in landscape. Now, I have some official paperwork from another country that has more the form of a spell scroll and the only way to fit that into my cabinet or binder or wherever is to fold it. Which is something I would like to avoid on things like birth certificates and such.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    I don't think anyone is defending documents that have to be rolled up? Letter should fit fine into your file cabinet unless it has some really tight margins. If "legal" size is a problem, then I can understand that better, but that size is just as much of a pain in a letter world as in an A4 world. They made it too long on purpose. They likely would have done the same thing with A4 as a base, if letter didn't exist.

Ayesh 4y ago

I had this problem too, with majority of documents being A4, but a single bank/med bill ruins the rest of the stack. My solution was to just give up on keeping the documents unless I have to, for legal/tax purposes, and just digitally archive them. Modern scanner apps are super good, and the OCR/search features make the 20 seconds it takes to scan it and throw away the paper.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Honest question: why do you archive things you don’t have to archive?
- jxf 4y ago
  For me it's a "you never know" situation. The cost of being wrong about this can be very high.
- Ayesh 4y ago
  For easier searching and sometimes nostalgic reasons. When I was in my early 20s, I used to save ticket stubs, boarding passes, train tickets, etc when I was traveling, I really liked keeping them. But when I saw myself becoming a borderline hoarder, I took photos of them and threw all of them away. Even today, I have the habit of taking a document image of ticket stubs and other new things, specially when I'm in a new city or a country. There is no practical use for them, just that they help me to not stack up physical papers. The other real documents I archive are mostly documents related to dividend notices, water/electricity bills that unfortunately come in snail mail, etc. I'd be fine if I don't keep them, but I have them in the very unlikely scenario that I just might need to make a paper trail.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I have a bunch of stuff I wish I could easily digitize and throw away the originals. But, aside from doing a few selective things, the effort to en masse digitize and add enough metadata so I could actually find stuff isn't worth the return.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      For some people "please provide evidence of your previous travel history" is something to worry about. Will they accept digitalized version? Who knows!
      - ghaff 4y ago
        I would have absolutely no systematic record of my travel history outside of stamps in a passport and TripIt.
        throwaway290 4y ago
        Passports tend to get lost, and replacement won't have the stamps. Whether this matters for you mostly depends on your citizenship.
- usefulcat 4y ago
  Not the parent but: because you often don't know with certainty whether a particular document will be needed at some point in the future. Edit: Concrete example: I'll probably never get audited by the IRS, but if I ever do, I really really want to have all the records I need to defend myself.
  - bradknowles 4y ago
    For the IRS, you only need to keep documents seven years back. Anything older than seven years can be shredded.
    - copperx 4y ago
      So everybody must keep 7 years of archives? Is that why houses in the US are so big? And does everybody have an archival room? Or does the IRS accept scans? So many questions.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        How many documents do you have??? Surely one smallish box would do for most people?
        bradknowles 4y ago
        Some people, yes. Others, no. As your finances get more complex, and you change employers more often, and you have more 401k plans that are distributed around various companies, and you have multiple credit cards, etc... then your storage requirements will necessarily increase.
        ghaff 4y ago
        Essentially all such records are available online. In any case, a file cabinet is almost certainly sufficient if you want to save a few years of printed copies.
- jdeibele 4y ago
  My mother kept the first utility bill of the year for electricity, natural gas, water and sewer, etc. She lived in the same house for 42 years and liked to be able to see how much the amounts had changed over the years. I’m not sure it was tremendously useful but she could verify her feeling that water and sewer increased disproportionately to the others, for example.
  - copperx 4y ago
    How does she remember to do that every year? That's amazing.
- ColinWright 4y ago
  How do you know you don't need to archive it? Recently a colleague needed to provide 20 years of details of addresses lived and trips overseas made in order to complete various immigration forms. Governments can change their demands at their whim. If you don't have the documents, you're screwed.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I guess it happens but, while I've lived in the same house for many years, I wouldn't remotely have any real proof of overseas travel except for passport stamps and whatever is recorded in TripIt (which I assume wouldn't constitute proof). We're taking dozens and dozens of trips. I suspect very few people save that type of information unless they know in advance they'll need it.
    - ColinWright 4y ago
      If you never move, and certainly never travel between countries, then you are probably OK. But honestly, you don't know. Governments can and do change the laws when it suits them. Here's another specific example. It's not just the initial tweet, you can see example after example in the discussion: https://twitter.com/OmidVEbrahimi/status/1558024348132327424 https://twitter.com/OmidVEbrahimi/status/1558024348132327424 You're not in the same position, I assume you were born in the USA. But do you really trust the Government not to change the laws? And what if you want to accept a contract or employment in another country? How much would you need to have archived in those circumstances? Are you sure? Personally, having lived and worked in four countries, I archive pretty much everything.
jopsen 4y ago
I have box that papers I need to keep goes into. The theory is that it's highly unlikely that I'll ever need to produce/find the papers every again. So if I have to, I'll pay the cost of sorting and organizing the papers when that day comes. Kind of like lazy evaluation in Haskell :)

twic 4y ago

> I don't even know if there's perforated continuous stationery/form paper with tractor holes that, once you strip the holes, is A4 sized? There is. We had an ImageWriter in the 1980s which printed on exactly that. Until i read your comment, i assumed that was the standard! This format still exists, for example: https://www.paperstone.co.uk/paper/listing-paper-computer/5-star-computer-listing-paper-1-part-a4-11-66-inch-x-235mm-microperforated-plain-white-box-2000-sheets/p-25779 https://www.paperstone.co.uk/paper/listing-paper-computer/5-...

bonzini 4y ago
Technically it's 0.66 millimeter shorter than A4. A bigger problem is width, it does not fit the "standard" 80 columns.
gertrunde 4y ago
That paper does make me irrationally angry for one reason: "Sheet size is A4 - 11.66inch deep x 235mm wide (edge to edge including sprockets)" (Edit: Although it does make a sort of sense, in that dot matrix line height is in inches - but still aggravating).

bonzini 4y ago

The line height of a dot matrix printer is 1/6", so A4 continuous paper would be roughly 70 lines but not quite exactly 70. Breaks would be messed up after a few pages. It would also not fit 80 characters horizontally. That's why continuous paper is stuck with US letter or 14"x11" format.

justinlloyd 4y ago

I am sure someone has already pointed this out, but there is indeed A4 sized tractor paper. Old person irrelevant anecdote, in the days before affordable high resolution inkjets laser printers, 9-pin dot matrix, 24-pin dot matrix and daisywheel/golfball printers ruled the world. Submitting coursework in college was required to be on A4 paper, and if you used a dot matrix printer you lost marks too. Some of my college professors, even on my computer science undergrad were so stuck in their ways that they demanded you type everything up on a manual typewriter and would penalize you if they thought you had done it on a computer. College students were lazy, so everybody would use the college's 9-pin dot matrix printer (losing points) and then mad dash for the single guillotine cutter in the adminstration's office like they were French royalty in 1789. I special ordered very expensive A4 tractor feed paper, and bought a second-hand daisy wheel printer that nobody wanted because daisy wheels didn't do graphics, and typed everything up on a computer. No lost points, no lining up to use the guillotine, no mad dash at the end. But yeah, places using sizes other than A4, screw those guys.

bborud 4y ago
I would suspect the software was written for a non-A4 format, so if you were to put A4 paper in it you might get line wraps that would screw up multi-page prints. Oh my, I just remembered the pain of setting the perforation skip when using nonstandard paper. And then realizing that those problems were a luxury compared to the problems big professional office printers throw up today.
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  That satisfying tearing of the perforated tractor feed edges. And the not so satisyfing tear when you tried to do too many at once because you were in a hurry. Wide format tractor fed music paper in green. I had tractor fed graph paper for a while. If you want to know frustration, try lining up your DnD game maps to that... And I had forgotten about the perforation skip/misalignment. Thanks for bringing that back. Triggered.
samstave 4y ago
IDEA: Someone please make a "white noise" generator that play audio of old computer 'whirring' noises... like a dot matrix printer, a fax machine, a modem, etc... that plays low-key in the background... I actually miss the sound of a dot-matrix.

copperx 4y ago

I'm still waiting for the US to convert from letter size to A4. The change feels imminent, but for some reason it hasn't happened yet. Maybe we need to convert to the metric system first?

ihuman 4y ago
Why does it feel imminent?
- saalweachter 4y ago
  Honestly it's a lot easier to have bespoke paper sizes now, because (a) it's not like we're actually using paper for much and (b) you can just set your computer to whatever.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    And 90% of the time professional printers are going to be printing to huge sheets and cutting it down anyway.
  - slowmovintarget 4y ago
    I'm one of those fountain pen oddballs to whom paper is very important. A4 and A5 notebooks for me, please.
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      Same here. Off topic, or I'd discuss my fountain pen collection.
      - flkiwi 4y ago
        By which you mean “addiction” if my desk is anything to go by.
        slowmovintarget 4y ago

samstave 4y ago

Back in my day, I had a CTO that required I | the messages log to the line printer.... Each day I would have to review the log for any security breaches with a highlighter and investigate any attempts to break our system... Yeah, that sucked. (we were one of the first VOIP people...) ((Quicknet))

Diesel555 4y ago

>They don't line up nicely with the A4 stuff. They don't go gently in the A4 folders / sleeves / pockets / ring binders (files) / etc. This statement, and the rest of the post, simply reads "I don't like different". However, the article is about the mathematical benefits of A4, the failures of 8.5x11, and the true benefit of A4 from a paper-size agnostic society. This article convinced A4 is better (and the entire system) not because it doesn't fit in my folders, but because it makes practical sense.

personalidea 4y ago
It has practical implications. I have a file cabinet which is made for A4 paper in landscape. Now, I have some official paperwork from another country that has more the form of a spell scroll and the only way to fit that into my cabinet or binder or wherever is to fold it. Which is something I would like to avoid on things like birth certificates and such.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  I don't think anyone is defending documents that have to be rolled up? Letter should fit fine into your file cabinet unless it has some really tight margins. If "legal" size is a problem, then I can understand that better, but that size is just as much of a pain in a letter world as in an A4 world. They made it too long on purpose. They likely would have done the same thing with A4 as a base, if letter didn't exist.