10 ms·

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

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
        * Coughs in Urushi * I once took the time to figure out how much ink I used per page. 1.1 mL of ink from the CON-70 in my Pilot Custom Urushi (FM) translated to 11 pages of writing on A4 paper (~ 350 words per page). Because A5 pages are half the size of A4, I now knew both how many pages of either size notebook it would take me to finish a bottle of ink: ~ 500 A4 or 1000 A5 pages to one bottle of Iroshizuku Shin-Kai. That's going to take me while, but, due to the paper sizing properties, I have an easy translation of the information.
        flkiwi 4y ago
        That was an excellent "drag the topic back to the topic" play. Well done.
        saalweachter 4y ago
        Eh, the half-size relationship is hardly an innovation of the A-series of paper: the US uses letter, tabloid/ledger (double-letter-size), and half and quarter letter size. US printed matter and blank books mostly end up in that same set of sizes, because they're all made by cutting and folding the starting stock in half, modulo some trimming of the edges to square them up after binding. The innovation of the A-series line was using the golden ratio, so that the half-sized paper has the same aspect ratio; half-sized paper always had half the area.
        flkiwi 4y ago
        That is among the plausible definitions of "half-sized paper". LOL. But the A-series innovation makes it easier to imagine scaling content/resources because you don't have to "retypeset" in your brain. But, mostly, my fascination with A-series paper as an American is rooted in my utter disappointment that we refuse to use the metric system (even though every single American does without knowing it).
bobthepanda 4y ago
Most printers sold are letter size by default. Most can accommodate A4 but the defaults need to be changed, you need to arrange new suppliers of office supplies (A4 is less prevalent in the US than Letter size) etc. I‘d imagine that printer sales are declining in the digital era, which slows down a transition, and most of the ones remaining are at institutions with a lot of inertia (government, medicine)
- hilbert42 4y ago
  "Most printers sold are letter size by default." No, there are many more printers in the rest of the world than in the US and the vast majority are used with or are set to A4 paper. A4 is the world standard, like it or not. It's only the US and a schizophrenic UK that converted to metric and still doesn't realize it that aren't metric.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    I guess I should qualify that with, most printers sold in the US are letter size by default, and that would be true for pretty much any sort of office supply store in the US. Which means that it‘s also the easiest thing to source in the US.
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      My experience of every modern printer I've seen of Oriental manufacture and that I've used in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia are essentially identical when it comes to paper sizes. All cassettes are large enough to take American Quarto/Letter size and have adjustments/paper restraining guides that easily cover both sizes. It's possible that there are printers being imported into the US that have nonadjustable cassettes but I've never seen any (not in recent decades anyway). Even decades ago the HP LaserJet II and III would take both sizes. BTW, I still have a a fully functional LJ III bought around 1994. As far as I'm aware, there are no printer manufacturers that manufacture normal office type printers left in the US, everything now comes from Asia. Edit: However, in the US reams of letter size are the norm whereas nowadays it's almost impossible to Letter size in any other country. It's been a problem for me because I've had to produce manuals in both paper sizes (depending on which country I was working in at the time). Same with the ring binders which are slightly different sizes not to mention that the US often only uses 3-ring binders whereas everywhere else they're 4-ring and the hole spacings are incompatible.
pessimizer 4y ago
> The change feels imminent Really? I see zero chance of it. A4, while mathematically nice, offers very little benefit and is an awkward (just a little too large) size to handle. Consistent ratios are of extremely dubious value; if I'm reducing a text by 50%, I'm going to retypeset it anyway. A5 is even more awkward than A4. Too big.
- scoot 4y ago
  Too big for what? A5 is half the size of A4. But regardless, A5 and A3 both have their uses.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Too long to handle comfortably. I've never liked it. I do make sure to typeset two versions of things I do so Europeans can have something they're familiar with (and their tooling prefers), but I just prefer things a little shorter and a little fatter. edit: about A5 specifically, I prefer 5½ x 8½, which tends to become 5¼ x 8¼ (even smaller) after trimming the bleeds.
    - ChrisRR 4y ago
      Too long? A4 is shorter than letter by 18mm
hilbert42 4y ago
"The change feels imminent," You have to be joking. The US is already the laughing stock of the world as it's demonstrated repeatedly that it's incapable of going metric. (If you go metric you automatically get A4.) I recall Kennedy once said that the 'US chose to go to the moon and do other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard'. Seems many took 'other things' to heart and decided that if things had to be done the hard way then they may as well continue slogging it out with the antiquated brain-muddling Imperial System. Right, doing 'nothing' the hard way set the US back a decade or two.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  > If you go metric you automatically get A4. Canada is metric in almost everything it does, but it still uses Letter-size paper.
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    An excellent example of the spillover effect. I've noticed that whenever I've visit there. Also to this outsider, that cultural and physical coupling to your southern neighbor is noticeably different in different parts of the country say between Quebec and British Columbia for instance.
- pseingatl 4y ago
  Twice in the past century the US changed paper sizes. During WWII, to save paper, the government mandated that letter size would be one inch shorter, so it was 7 1/2 x 10. This innovation did not survive the war. Legal documents submitted to court had to be on legal size paper. In Florida, this was prohibited by the end of the 1980's. Land deeds followed thereafter. Not sure when federal courts jumped to letter paper. Letter paper is the default for LaTeX. Thank the gods for the KOMA classes.
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    The British and Commonwealth countries were hardly better with their foolscap and legal sizes, it was a big mess. The A sizes, A4 etc., and the B sizes for posters and art are significant step forward because of their ISO standardization and widespread adoption However, from my perspective, it's not perfect, especially so at the 'edges'. For example the width of A7 shirt-pocket size notebooks of the spiral-bound flip-over variety are just too narrow to use comfortably, here the standard breaks down. Before ISO standardization notebooks of this type were often wider and easier to use, also they were commonly available.

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
        * Coughs in Urushi * I once took the time to figure out how much ink I used per page. 1.1 mL of ink from the CON-70 in my Pilot Custom Urushi (FM) translated to 11 pages of writing on A4 paper (~ 350 words per page). Because A5 pages are half the size of A4, I now knew both how many pages of either size notebook it would take me to finish a bottle of ink: ~ 500 A4 or 1000 A5 pages to one bottle of Iroshizuku Shin-Kai. That's going to take me while, but, due to the paper sizing properties, I have an easy translation of the information.
        flkiwi 4y ago
        That was an excellent "drag the topic back to the topic" play. Well done.
        saalweachter 4y ago
        Eh, the half-size relationship is hardly an innovation of the A-series of paper: the US uses letter, tabloid/ledger (double-letter-size), and half and quarter letter size. US printed matter and blank books mostly end up in that same set of sizes, because they're all made by cutting and folding the starting stock in half, modulo some trimming of the edges to square them up after binding. The innovation of the A-series line was using the golden ratio, so that the half-sized paper has the same aspect ratio; half-sized paper always had half the area.
        flkiwi 4y ago
        That is among the plausible definitions of "half-sized paper". LOL. But the A-series innovation makes it easier to imagine scaling content/resources because you don't have to "retypeset" in your brain. But, mostly, my fascination with A-series paper as an American is rooted in my utter disappointment that we refuse to use the metric system (even though every single American does without knowing it).

bobthepanda 4y ago

Most printers sold are letter size by default. Most can accommodate A4 but the defaults need to be changed, you need to arrange new suppliers of office supplies (A4 is less prevalent in the US than Letter size) etc. I‘d imagine that printer sales are declining in the digital era, which slows down a transition, and most of the ones remaining are at institutions with a lot of inertia (government, medicine)

hilbert42 4y ago
"Most printers sold are letter size by default." No, there are many more printers in the rest of the world than in the US and the vast majority are used with or are set to A4 paper. A4 is the world standard, like it or not. It's only the US and a schizophrenic UK that converted to metric and still doesn't realize it that aren't metric.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  I guess I should qualify that with, most printers sold in the US are letter size by default, and that would be true for pretty much any sort of office supply store in the US. Which means that it‘s also the easiest thing to source in the US.
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    My experience of every modern printer I've seen of Oriental manufacture and that I've used in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia are essentially identical when it comes to paper sizes. All cassettes are large enough to take American Quarto/Letter size and have adjustments/paper restraining guides that easily cover both sizes. It's possible that there are printers being imported into the US that have nonadjustable cassettes but I've never seen any (not in recent decades anyway). Even decades ago the HP LaserJet II and III would take both sizes. BTW, I still have a a fully functional LJ III bought around 1994. As far as I'm aware, there are no printer manufacturers that manufacture normal office type printers left in the US, everything now comes from Asia. Edit: However, in the US reams of letter size are the norm whereas nowadays it's almost impossible to Letter size in any other country. It's been a problem for me because I've had to produce manuals in both paper sizes (depending on which country I was working in at the time). Same with the ring binders which are slightly different sizes not to mention that the US often only uses 3-ring binders whereas everywhere else they're 4-ring and the hole spacings are incompatible.

pessimizer 4y ago

> The change feels imminent Really? I see zero chance of it. A4, while mathematically nice, offers very little benefit and is an awkward (just a little too large) size to handle. Consistent ratios are of extremely dubious value; if I'm reducing a text by 50%, I'm going to retypeset it anyway. A5 is even more awkward than A4. Too big.

scoot 4y ago
Too big for what? A5 is half the size of A4. But regardless, A5 and A3 both have their uses.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Too long to handle comfortably. I've never liked it. I do make sure to typeset two versions of things I do so Europeans can have something they're familiar with (and their tooling prefers), but I just prefer things a little shorter and a little fatter. edit: about A5 specifically, I prefer 5½ x 8½, which tends to become 5¼ x 8¼ (even smaller) after trimming the bleeds.
  - ChrisRR 4y ago
    Too long? A4 is shorter than letter by 18mm

hilbert42 4y ago

"The change feels imminent," You have to be joking. The US is already the laughing stock of the world as it's demonstrated repeatedly that it's incapable of going metric. (If you go metric you automatically get A4.) I recall Kennedy once said that the 'US chose to go to the moon and do other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard'. Seems many took 'other things' to heart and decided that if things had to be done the hard way then they may as well continue slogging it out with the antiquated brain-muddling Imperial System. Right, doing 'nothing' the hard way set the US back a decade or two.

frosted-flakes 4y ago
> If you go metric you automatically get A4. Canada is metric in almost everything it does, but it still uses Letter-size paper.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  An excellent example of the spillover effect. I've noticed that whenever I've visit there. Also to this outsider, that cultural and physical coupling to your southern neighbor is noticeably different in different parts of the country say between Quebec and British Columbia for instance.
pseingatl 4y ago
Twice in the past century the US changed paper sizes. During WWII, to save paper, the government mandated that letter size would be one inch shorter, so it was 7 1/2 x 10. This innovation did not survive the war. Legal documents submitted to court had to be on legal size paper. In Florida, this was prohibited by the end of the 1980's. Land deeds followed thereafter. Not sure when federal courts jumped to letter paper. Letter paper is the default for LaTeX. Thank the gods for the KOMA classes.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  The British and Commonwealth countries were hardly better with their foolscap and legal sizes, it was a big mess. The A sizes, A4 etc., and the B sizes for posters and art are significant step forward because of their ISO standardization and widespread adoption However, from my perspective, it's not perfect, especially so at the 'edges'. For example the width of A7 shirt-pocket size notebooks of the spiral-bound flip-over variety are just too narrow to use comfortably, here the standard breaks down. Before ISO standardization notebooks of this type were often wider and easier to use, also they were commonly available.