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> The first thing that came to attention, the paper that the text was printed on wasn’t an A4, it was smaller and not a size I was familiar with. I measured it
by diggan 2y ago
> The first thing that came to attention, the paper that the text was printed on wasn’t an A4, it was smaller and not a size I was familiar with. I measured it and found that it’s a US letter size paper at about 21.5cm x 27.9cm. I completely forgot that the US, Canada, and a few other countries don’t follow the standard international paper sizes, even though I had written about it earlier.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the US and some other countries decided to do things differently... As a European, I don't think I've ever seen something not A4 or A3/A4 in a professional context in my life, ever. Are US letter sizes what people use instead of A4 in a workplace for documents and such (seems confusing if so), and do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing? Or just happens to be something FSF only seem to be doing?
- jodaco 2y agoIt’s a US thing and most printers in the US default to it. You would be hard pressed to find someone who knows what A4 is. Letter size is 8-1/2 x 11 inches by US standards.
- bombcar 2y agoI've found that many Americans know what A4 is - that "weird European size that doesn't print right".
- robin_reala 2y agoIt’s US standard. Hence the infamous default PC LOAD LETTER message on HP printers that made zero sense to anyone outside the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_LOAD_LETTER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_LOAD_LETTER
- bombcar 2y agoPC isn't Personal Computer, it's Paper Cartridge. That's the missing link for Americans.
- crazygringo 2y agoThat's implying it made sense to people in the US...
- bayindirh 2y ago> do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing? Or just happens to be something FSF only seem to be doing? Yes, the default printing paper for US is US Letter. I prefer to use my computers with US English language, and macOS defaults to US Letter as print and page size when you use US English as the default language. Moreover, I had a ream of US Letter paper in the past, given me by our neighbor (I live in a A4 country, so it's that "odd" size).
- remram 2y agoYes all paper is usually letter. It's close to A4, so you don't usually need to reformat documents to print on one or the other. Most printers take A4 and US letter and adapt automatically. A4 is readily available in the US but not commonly used. The main problem is that if you cut it in half, you get a really silly sizes (too narrow) instead of A5.
- sgarland 2y ago> Most printers take A4 and US letter and adapt automatically I found out that they do not automatically adapt to JIS sizes. My wife’s work once had a printer that somehow got configured to use JIS, I assume JB5. It then refused to print on US Letter, but as printers are wont to do, didn’t produce any useful error message, nor relay this information to the computer. It just wouldn’t print. I only discovered this (because if you work in tech, you must know how to fix printers, right?) by laboriously scrolling through every menu on the tiny LCD screen, and finding that the paper settings were incorrect.
- frutiger 2y ago> if you work in tech, you must know how to fix printers, right? You kid, but it turns out the assumption was correct in this case. I suppose the truth is that by working in tech, you are likely very methodical and rely on deduction, which are both essential in fixing printer issues.
- sgarland 2y agoYes, but that’s the annoying part. So many tech problems that people encounter can be trivially solved with a quick web search, poking at menus until you find something promising, or a combination thereof. I remember helping my mom over the phone to troubleshoot something on her iPhone – at the time, I had an Android, so everything was foreign to me, but I was able to deduce where a given setting might exist, and figured out whatever the problem was. I don’t know when or why this skill declined, but it’s upsetting.
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- jccalhoun 2y agoYes, in the USA letter size is the standard. A3,4 don't exist. It isn't confusing because I would guess that more than half of all people in the USA don't even know that letter size isn't the standard everywhere. I was probably in my late 20s before I found out that Europe doesn't use the same size paper as we in the USA do. I can remember exactly once that I encountered it in the wild (I was at a conference and someone from Europe had some handouts).
- jillyboel 2y ago[flagged]
- School-Cotton 2y agoNo, letter is used throughout North America and in parts of South America.
- sgarland 2y agoOh no, it’s worse. 8.5 x 11” is US Letter, or 215.9 x 279.4 mm. We also have US Legal, which as the name implies, is frequently used by legal professions. I have no idea why. It is 8.5 x 14”, or 215.9 x 355.6 mm. Finally, we have US Tabloid (I guess used for small newspapers?), which is 11 x 17”, or 279.4 x 431.8 mm. And yes, our printers default to US Letter. The line from the movie Office Space: “PC Load Letter? WTF does that mean?” is the printer’s cryptic way of saying “Load Letter-sized paper into the Paper Cassette.” EDIT: there are are apparently more US-specific sizes I was unaware of, which you can view and compare with others on this site: https://papersizes.io/us/ https://papersizes.io/us/
- dsr_ 2y agoNearly everything in the US uses letter, legal (letter but longer), or tabloid (double width letter, to be folded over). Much to my surprise, a random check of a US-based office supply company shows that they do have A4 in stock -- at a price about 40% higher than letter-sized.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoI used to work at Kodak and they had an industrial printer division in my building. They would go through pallet-fulls of A4 for their testing. Only place Ive seen it in use in a business setting in the US.
- kstrauser 2y agoAnd by “nearly everything”, I've never personally seen or used printer or copier paper that wasn't letter or legal. I know it exists, but I've never, not once, bought or used it.
- owl57 2y ago> legal (letter but longer) This one surprised me quite a bit. I think most people have A4/letter-sized folders. Why does anyone think that papers slightly longer than those folders are a good idea?
- bombcar 2y agoLegal size folders exist and are widely used by people who use ... legal size paper. Legal folders can be great to be able to print letter-sized things on, then you have an area at the bottom to write notes and stuff.
- cannam 2y agoI'm just about old enough to remember (in the UK) foolscap paper, an imperial size also a bit longer than A4. You never see it any more (at least I don't) but foolscap sized box-files are still readily available. I guess a slightly bigger box than you need is not usually a problem.
- rietta 2y agoIt's the standard here in the USA. The other standard is the US Legal at 8.5 inches by 14 inches (216 mm by 356 mm). This is what is used in court settings (hence the name) but also things like paper mortgage statements will typically come printed on that. That is much similar to your A4 size. I am familiar with A4, A5 and such. But I think that fewer and fewer people are. It's just not something used every day. As a side note, most of the big important house bills and statements I still insist on receiving via US mail for protection reasons. There is a risk if I only had them emailed to me that my wife would not have access. If I were to suddenly die, I don't want my wife with our kids to miss a critical bill. By having them show up at the house in physical form provides a bit of defense in depth here.
- gnfargbl 2y agoThere's a map of ANSI vs ISO paper size usage around the world which crops up on Reddit occasionally: https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/19dswr4 https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/19dswr4 I can guess why the Philippines uses ANSI sizes. But Chile?
- sanderjd 2y agoHow is this "confusing"? I don't think I've ever thought about paper size a single time in my life.
- int_19h 2y agoI think GP is referring to the name - "letter" implies that it's the standard paper size used for writing letters specifically, as opposed to printed documents (of course, in US it's really both).
- twoodfin 2y agoI’d guess that nomenclature originates in the world where every small US Main Street had a stationary store carrying all manner of paper sizes and stocks for diverse purposes—none of which involved use in anything more sophisticated than a typewriter. One particular “standard” that sticks out in my memory was “math paper”, which I recall as being unbleached, about 5” x 8”, and used pervasively in primary education (at least in New England) into the 1990’s.
- sanderjd 2y agoOh... I don't really see why "letter" is a more confusing way to describe a paper size than "A4"... My general point is just that I'm surprised so many people seem to notice and care about paper size in general. I've just never thought about this at all.
- int_19h 2y agoWell, "A4" doesn't imply anything about the intended use. The format of the name also implies that there is A3, A5 etc, both of which aren't all that uncommon either. But, yes, for most people it doesn't really matter - you go to the store, you buy paper, you shove it into your printer, and it mostly just works. However, it's also not all that hard to run into situations where things break. E.g. most PDFs originating from US are rendered for Letter size paper, which means that printing them outside of US generally requires setting "fit size" rather than "original" to ensure that nothing gets clipped. Vice versa also happens, but because US is so culturally dominant, Americans rarely run into that particular issue.
- int_19h 2y agoLike most other weird things in US that pertain to measurements and units thereof, letter-sized paper predates the A-series standard (which originated in Germany). FWIW the latter didn't became an ISO standard until late 20th century. Americans are just very obstinate about those things. It's like the Windows of metrology - backwards compatibility trumps everything else, even when you have utterly bonkers things like ounces vs fluid ounces.
- School-Cotton 2y agoWe are not particularly obstinate, we just have no strong reason to change. Metric is already used in areas where it actually matters (e.g. STEM)
- eadmund 2y ago> Metric is already used in areas where it actually matters (e.g. STEM) Using French Revolutionary units doesn’t really matter in STEM, either: one can conduct science just as well in any units one wishes. One unit of measure is not more scientific than another. For example, degrees Kelvin and Rankine measure the same thing with different units. If anything, the Rankine degrees are more precise!
- pasc1878 2y agoHowever the abbreviation is STEM. For S and especiually M you can do in different units. For T&E it really matters see NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter and the need for heroics in the Gimli glider. You need to keep to the same unit.
- eadmund 2y ago> For T&E it really matters see NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter and the need for heroics in the Gimli glider. > You need to keep to the same unit. Completely agreed. You’ll get similar issues if you have one set of parts using m/s and others using km/hr. And you’ll avoid those issues with any standard, whether it’s m/s, knots or mph. The important thing is to have a standard.
- School-Cotton 2y ago> seems confusing if so It is no more confusing to Americans than the fact that Europeans use A4 is to Europeans. Why should it be? Just like you didn’t know standards other than A4 exist, Americans don’t think about the fact that standards other than 8.5x11 inches (I.e. letter) exist. All printers, binders, folders, hole punchers, etc. are made with letter size paper in mind, and most people unless they are involved in business with other countries have never encountered an A4 sheet of paper in their lives and probably have no idea other standards exist.
- diggan 2y ago> It is no more confusing to Americans than the fact that Europeans use A4 is to Europeans. Why should it be? Well, A4 (and variants) are not Europe-specific formats, it's the formats most of the world except some few countries (including the US) use, so I'd say it's slightly more surprising than the other way around.
- School-Cotton 2y agoRight, but why does that make letter size confusing? Even if every other country in the world used A4, the only people in the US who would even notice would be people who commonly do business with other countries or who live near the border. And in reality, Canada and Mexico also use letter so the border thing doesn’t apply. So why should letter confuse us just because other people use something else?
- diggan 2y ago> Right, but why does that make letter size confusing? That's the part I initially quoted; "the paper that the text was printed on wasn’t an A4, it was smaller and not a size I was familiar with. I measured it and found that it’s a US letter size paper at about 21.5cm x 27.9cm" The author isn't from North America, so they had forgotten the format was different, so they got confused when they assumed it would have been A4 like the rest of the world, but it wasn't. > the only people in the US who would even notice would be people who commonly do business with other countries or who live near the border Or, as in the case of the author, they live outside of North American and send/receive letters to/from North America.
- dizhn 2y agoIt's a pretty good paper size standard. Fold A4 in half and you get A5. Put two A4s side by side and that's an A3 size.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tallanvor 2y agoLook, there's plenty of things to complain about with regards to the US - especially these days. But getting upset about US citizens not using all the same standards in their daily lives as many other places is just silly. --It's like complaining about the UK and a relatively small number of countries that chose to drive on the left instead of the right. Could they change? Sure. Are they likely to change? Seems pretty unlikely.
- diggan 2y ago> But getting upset about US citizens not using all the same standards in their daily lives as many other places is just silly Good thing it wasn't a complaint then, just questions from someone who doesn't know how it works across the pond :) And it seems to be the story of someone outside of North America trying to interact with the North American standards, not some internal confusion between internal states or whatnot.
- therealpygon 2y ago> Are US letter sizes what people use instead of A4 in a workplace for documents and such (seems confusing if so) Yes, it is just our standard like A4 is yours. When you pull a paper out of the pack it is A4 when we pull it out it is ANSI A, commonly known a US Letter size. Instead of 8.27”x11.69”, we use 8.5”x11”. We also commonly use US Legal size, which is 8.5”x14”. Slightly longer and can fit in the same envelope. > do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing? Yes. However all of our printers can do all sizes since our paper is slightly larger, while an A4 specific printer couldn’t print a US letter.
- rswail 2y agoExcept pretty much all printer drivers these days can down convert from letter to A4. Margins on left/right might be skinnier, but length wise US letter fits.
- pests 2y agoSince they are talking about physical paper size, I assume they meant that an A4 printer that physically only takes A4 sized paper would not be able to print on letter paper stock, as its physically too big to fit. I can print any size onto a business card too with down converting and messing with margins.
- 2mlWQbCK 2y agoI don't think I ever had a A4 printer that could not also print Letter. It is almost certainly the exact same models that they also sell in the US, but with just some bit flipped in the firmware to change the default paper size. My current printer, like most printers I believe, can be configured to print custom sizes. The maximum is something like 9 or 9.5 inches wide IIRC, and the length can be set much longer.