14 ms·

Paper sizes

320 points by willvarfar 12y ago

johansch 12y ago
Anecdote: the office management/finance/HR people in the european office where I work really, really hate US Letter formats, because they don't really fit in "normal" binders. They're the ones who really suffer from this, because they're the only people who deal with paper format documents these days, I guess.
- couchand 12y ago
  I can feel their pain: I have two binders from school in Germany that don't fit on the shelf with my other (US-sized) binders. They're destined to be lying down for the rest of their days.
- sschueller 12y ago
  Also the fact that the US punches 3 holes instead of 2 or 4
- smackfu 12y ago
  US Letter is shorter than A4, so it seems like they should fit fine? I guess it's 6mm wider but that is not much.
  - vmarsy 12y ago
    For some important documents that you want to preserve and/or don't want to pierce there is a solution: store it in a plastic sleeve like this one: http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/1777660007/100-X-A4-CLEAR-font-b-PLASTIC-b-font-PUNCH-PUNCHED-POCKETS-font-b-FOLDERS-b.jpg http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/1777660007/100-X-A4-CLEAR... If you happen to receive US letter sized paper, it won't fit because of the width, that is too much for these, and they get crumpled.
  - johansch 12y ago
    Never underestimate the level of OCD in good finance/office management people. :)
- mjevans 12y ago
  It's worse over here in the US. At least in Europe the paper doesn't require a different shelf height when dealing with printed materials from 'across the pond'. I would find it ever so sensible if we would just let imperial measures die over here so we could end the pain of international business.
- lobster_johnson 12y ago
  As a European, I would also like to point that the U.S. doesn't use the Letter format exclusively. Bills, in particular, come in all sorts of weird formats. Things like electricity bills sometimes come in long, narrow formats that don't fit in any kind of binder!
anonu 12y ago
I've lived in the US and also in a country that used the A-series extensively. While I've always appreciated the beauty and math of the A-series, I find the aspect-ratio of the US Letter paper to be much more appealing. A4 tends to be too long and too narrow.
- skore 12y ago
  From the article: > US Letter: 216 mm x 279 mm > A4: 210 mm × 297 mm so it's 18mm longer while being 6mm narrower. At that small a difference, I would assume that a preference of one over the other is similar to that of metric vs. imperial - the one you were raised on just seems right. Which one did you grow up with?
  - jgrahamc 12y ago
    I grew up with the A sizes of paper and agree with the parent comment. When I moved to the US I was pleasantly surprised by the size/shape of US Letter sized paper.
  - eterm 12y ago
    But it is both 18mm and 6mm narrower, so it goes from 1.414 to 1.29 in terms of ratio. In other words A4 seems 10% narrower in terms of shape, which isn't insignificant. Having said that, I'd rather keep A4 given the useful properties described in the article.
  - johnchristopher 12y ago
    For what it's worth: I am a European, still living in Europe and surrounded by A4 and I envy American's US Letter format. I almost always have the feeling that A4 is too big.
  - nileshtrivedi 12y ago
    That's a 9.5% difference in the aspect ratio. I don't think that's small.
  - realusername 12y ago
    It's just that you can resize everything while still keeping the same portions with the A* paper while with the US formats you just have to redesign everything.
talideon 12y ago
I've tried in the past to explain how awesome the sqrt(2) ratio used as the basis of DIN/ISO page sizes is, but there are some very dumb people on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821947
- mrottenkolber 12y ago
  Haha that thread is great... good old metric system.
  - talideon 12y ago
    It was like talking to a brick wall. A very dumb brick wall that couldn't get it through their head that the units didn't matter, and that what mattered was the ratio.
    - willvarfar 12y ago
      The A0 being 1m^2 is important too, if you're ordering paper by area?
      - talideon 12y ago
        Yeah, but that's really a different argument. Once you get the ratio argument, you get the utility of the system.
      - RVuRnvbM2e 12y ago
        The A0 being 1m^2 is important because paper weight is given in gsm - grams per square metre. Thus when calculating postage weight by counting the number of sheets you can calculate that, for example, the weight of one A4 sheet is 1/16 the gsm of the paper - 1/(2^4).
        michaelhoffman 12y ago
        Oppose the totally insane system used along with U.S. paper sizes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_density#Basis_weight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_density#Basis_weight In order to figure out the actual mass of a sheet of U.S. paper from the reported basis weight, you must know how many sheets of paper were in the "basis ream" and what dimensions they were. The basis ream sheet dimensions may have nothing to do with your final sheet of paper, and the number of sheets varies too.
colechristensen 12y ago
This is one of those things that seems technically correct (the best kind of correct) but practically ... meh. The benefit exists but is barely enough to get anyone entrenched to actually change. Much like the common usage of the US Customary units, nothing is going to actually change.
- talideon 12y ago
  It has other useful effects: it makes it easier to standardise containers for the sheets, as well as their division, amongst other things. And all this from the simple use of a ratio.
  - colechristensen 12y ago
    There's just a threshold of utility that has to be passed in order for a new standard to take hold. How much would the US really benefit from switching? How much would switching cost? The efficiency gained wouldn't come near to the efficiency lost during the switch, and nobody really cares all that much about paper size.
    - talideon 12y ago
      I'm not making the argument that the US should switch (though I wish they would), I'm just stating that the advantages are deeper than they appear at first blush.
- RVuRnvbM2e 12y ago
  Except, you know, everywhere that isn't the US.
- justincormack 12y ago
  Odd how every single country in the world has adopted it, except for the US and Canada. They all changed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_standard:_ISO_216 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_s...
StefanKarpinski 12y ago
When someone claims uncritically that the ratio of any two integers is √2, I get a little edgy. I'm also having a hard time following this simplification: A / √A = A × A / A = A Huh? This only holds if √A = A = 1. I haven't checked the rest, but this doesn't give me much confidence. Of course, knowing those Europeans, these sizes do probably make tons of sense on paper (see what I did there?), even if this isn't the best explanation of it.
- talideon 12y ago
  There's nothing crazy here. It just means that if the length of the long side is √2 times the size of short side. That has the nice property that you can bisect the sheet and get two smaller sheets where the ratio between the long and short edges is maintained, which makes it standardising a whole bunch of other things much more straightforward.
  - amalcon 12y ago
    I believe that gp's point is that this is impossible, what with √2 being an irrational number. It is pretty close (4 significant digits), but of course not exact.
    - talideon 12y ago
      It's not that big a deal: once you have a basic page size that's close enough, it's just a matter of slicing it in two. In practice, any error is too small to matter.
- delinka 12y ago
  The article's not claiming that the ratio of any two integers is √2, he's claiming that when the ratio of the lengths of the sides (the aspect ratio) is √2 that it's easy to keep that ratio with smaller pages by cutting the longer dimension in half. As for your equation above, A/√A != A x A / A, but I'm not seeing where in the article you got this either.
  - deleted 12y ago
mrottenkolber 12y ago
I have to note that A4 (what goes in a standard printer) is just a shitty format for documents. There is no way to get a proper layout done, you basically need two columns to use a reasonable amount of space with regards to font size and text body layout, which leads to other problems. There is a very good reason you don't see any A4 books. A5 works OK for book layouts but still is too wide actually... A5 booklet printed: http://mr.gy/blogopy/max/3589981109.html http://mr.gy/blogopy/max/3589981109.html
- redcodenl 12y ago
  The point is: An A5 booklet on A4 is the same as A4 booklet on A3, etc.
  - mrottenkolber 12y ago
    No its not. In fact its completely unrelated because when making book you should care for aspects like font size and text body layout which follow an ergonomic perspective. E.g. the same booklet layout on a3 wouldn't work at all because the font would be huge. Keep the font size small and you have really long lines...
    - willvarfar 12y ago
      I regularly print out A4 documents two-to-a-page side-by-side on my office printer. It saves paper, its easier to carry around, and it works just fine. No distortion. If your docs are US Letter, how well do they print out scaled down two-to-a-page side-by-side?
      - theOnliest 12y ago
        I do this a lot for printing out (research) articles, and the answer is that the text gets shrunk much more, and the margins increased to account for the difference. (This actually turns out to be useful in practice, since there's much more whitespace to take notes in.)
sebgeelen 12y ago
Is this the place to bring "inches vs cm" on the table ? :p
- talideon 12y ago
  Totally orthogonal argument. It's the ratio that matters.
- snarfy 12y ago
  It's not the place, but not that you've brought it, as an American I say imperial units can go die in a fire.
nakedrobot2 12y ago
Why did Americans simplify and streamline the English Language, but they didn't bother with all of the systems of measurement?
- chiph 12y ago
  Now you know how hard it is to replace a legacy system. :) Actually, we're going the wrong way. The last highway sign I saw in metric was on I-95 northbound. They replaced it a couple of years ago (too old - the reflective material was worn out), and the new one only has miles on it. There's a short highway in Arizona (I-19) that is only signed in kilometers (it runs to the Mexican border), and there are calls to replace them all with distances in miles.
- rsynnott 12y ago
  Americans didn't simplify and streamline the English language, certainly not intentionally. If you're talking about the spelling thing, there were no standard spellings at the time when the US broke away from Britain; standards were independently created at a later date.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Early American dictionaries deliberately set out to simplify spellings (and later editions made more aggressive simplifications that didn't catch on).
- ajuc 12y ago
  English is far from being streamlined. In fact it's the only language I know that requires you to learn how to pronounce EACH word. Most languages only require learning how each letter sounds, and maybe a few dozen di/trigraphs, the rest is regular. Not so in English.
  - sswezey 12y ago
    You have to learn to pronounce each word with Chinese too.
glitch 12y ago
I really wish we'd switch to the ISO-216 sizes. A4 to A3 is so much more enjoyable and painless than Letter to Tabloid. This kind of thing came up often while making posters for campus because it was cheaper to NOT print out all of the posters on Tabloid. Rather, using a mix of Tabloid (for the important poster posting spots) and Letter (for unimportant spots and as flyers for handout). Always ended up having to spend more time to make two layouts because of it. And A4 to A5 for booklets without having to re-layout the document is a huge plus too! And for books, I like to use B4* to fold in half. (B5 pages are nicer than A5 pages for the kind of books I tend to read.) The proportions are all the same, so it just works! One layout, many paper size (of the same proportion) possibilities! Edit: Additional note with regard to the book publication (depending on printing and binding method used)... Sometimes/often this is printed on something like A3 size for bleeding and with crop marks. The A3 paper is then folded and cut, so that the pages become B5 size. (Signatures essentially composed of folded B4 as a consequence of the cropping. There is of course difference between the outermost sheet and the innermost sheet in each paper signature, which is why it's all cropped at the end.)
- mxfh 12y ago
  Is there are reason that B5 sized paper sheets are only available as imports from Japan in Europe? The strict interpretation of the B series as a packaging format for the A series only seems somewhat archaic.
  - glitch 12y ago
    Lack of demand in the States for ISO 216 sizes in general makes it so that relatively/comparatively few stock such paper in the U.S. When wanting to print to the edges (full bleed), publishers will often print on B sized paper sheets with crop marks for A size (and then crop the paper to A size) or similarly print on A and crop to B.
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    B5 paper sheets don't seem to be easily available in the UK. B5 books are the most common size though, most of my school exercise books were B5 or B4 — that allowed me to glue in a sheet of A-sized paper, possibly folded in half. Why do you prefer B5 to A4 for paper?
higherpurpose 12y ago
A lot of US "standards" (only US uses them) should be banned.
- sspiff 12y ago
  There is nothing weird about national standards. Everyone does it. Germany has DIN, for instance. Even tiny Belgium has the NBN. Usually, these standards are either equivalent to international standards or are only relevant in the home country of the organization.
robinanil 12y ago
Nooo... Dunder mifflin will be out of business!
melchior 12y ago
Another fun fact: An A0 piece of paper has an area of exactly 1 square meter.
- minikites 12y ago
  It says that right in the article.
robinanil 12y ago
Nooo... Dunder mifflin will be out of business!
Aoyagi 12y ago
Next step: metric measurement units everywhere. I've been waiting for that for decades. If "dozens" would die as well, even better.
- rikkus 12y ago
  But I don't want my eggs in boxes of 5.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  Counting in base 12 is much better than base 10. 12 has prime factors {2,2,3}, so you get 2,3,4 and 6 as integer divisors, not just 2 and 5. That's why dozens stuck as a counting unit on so many things, namely time (all the way back from Egyptians). You can even count using your fingers. Just count using your thumb pointing at each of the finger joints and the finger tip (you have two joints and one tip per finger and four fingers excluding the thumb). Actually, that's how Egyptians counted and that's why you get 12 hours in the realm of day and 12 hours in the realm of night. The only drawback is multiplication tables. If I tend to forget the multiplication table for 7 and 8, memorizing tables for 11 and 12 would be nightmarish :-) P.S. This is obviously tongue-in-cheek. While it may be marginally better, switching costs mean the optimal course of action is to stay at the local maximum and avoid switching.
  - transfire 12y ago
    I've done some extensive analysis of number systems (almost enough to write a book on the subject) and come to the conclusion that the best are senary (6) and quaternary (4). Six has all the benefits of twelve, save the extra divisor of 2 (and thus 4), but that is easily remedied by use of the square (36) when required. Quaternary may seem an odd choice, but the square is 16, so one naturally learns hexadecimal without doing hardly any extra work --you just pair up the digits. If your curious, duodecimal and octal come in after these and decimal falls to fifth place, which is fitting since its main advantage is divisibility by 5. :-)
    - jessaustin 12y ago
phragg 12y ago
Let's work on a demand for a metric standard instead of this..
acd 12y ago
Please ban letter size, ever been at the printer realsing nothing printed and facing PC Load letter message? Ever been in a foreign country trying to find your home countries legal size of paper in a local store? I think we should switch to metric, a4 paper and right hand driving.
- UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
  All of the countries using US Letter already drive on the right hand side...
  - ekimekim 12y ago
    I think the sentiment was "standardize on the majority", not "everything the US does is wrong".
allendoerfer 12y ago
The USA and the EU are currently negotiating a free trade agreement [0]. I would say call your representative to get it on the list. Not to get too political here, but that would be much more beneficial than much of the other stuff that is already on it, where usually the lower standard succeeds magically. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investm...
todd8 12y ago
I enjoy working with paper. My favorite notebooks are ISO A4 size because they give me a bit more vertical room and still fit well in my backpacks. The issues that come up with regard to US Letter size paper seem to be: 1) It's not metric -- yes that's true, but A4 is 210mm x 297mm. These numbers seem completely arbitrary and don't take advantage of the metric system. I wish the US was on the metric system, but it's not so 8.5 in by 11 inches at least has the advantage that it is measured in simple numbers with respect to standard measures in the US. 2) It's easier to store and work with A4 because it is one half of an A3 sheet -- however, US Letter is one half of the US Tabloid/Ledger size. The ANSI (American National Standards Institute) paper sizes in inches are A (8.5 x 11), B (11 x 17), C (17 x 22), D (22 x 34), etc. and share this advantage with the ISO standard. 3) The aspect ratio is is approximately sqrt(2)/2 for all paper in the A series, the B series, and the C series. But why is having but one shape of paper an advantage? Sometimes it's useful to have choices depending on the content to be printed on the paper. Furthermore, the ANSI paper sizes simply have two aspect ratios alternating as one increases paper size. It is argued that printing posters with corresponding flyers is easier with ISO paper sizes. But this is true with ANSI paper sizes: one would have to jump up two sizes from letter (ANSI A, 8.5 x 11 inches) to ANSI C (17 x 22 inches). So, for the case where one would like to print at ANSI B, the aspect ratio of the page is a bit different. Here we have, what appears to me, to be the first real advantage of ISO over ANSI paper, where we need to print a flyer at A4 and A5 (but not A6). However, this hasn't been a problem for me personally. I'm usually working with pages that have additional constraints. For example space for bindings or differences in margins between recto and verso sides of two sided printing. Whenever there are bindings involved the aspect ratio advantage goes out the window. 4) Every country uses ISO sizes, why not the US (and Canada and Mexico) -- well, this is oversimplifying things a bit. Take a look at the Wikipedia page for paper sizes. There are Japanese variants, German extensions, and Swedish extensions listed that deviate from the ISO standards. There are also Architectural sizes listed that are designed to have simple ratios for their aspect ratios. The idea that we would somehow be better off with fewer choices (just one) really for aspect ratio really strikes me as wrong. I like all the variety available in paper.
- murbard2 12y ago
  1) A0 is 1m^2
VLM 12y ago
HN effect killed the article, can't read it, have to estimate based on existing comments. Assuming they actually read it, of course. Paperless office, checking in here. Our printer is only used for people screwing around doing non-work related projects, printing school essays for themselves or their kids, real estate MLS records, car insurance forms, stuff like that.
smackfu 12y ago
Practically, the number of people who need to ever use a paper size other than letter/A4 is minimal. So any elegance is pretty much lost.
- maffydub 12y ago
  Hmmm... I'm not sure that's true. Looking around my desk (in London, UK) I have - a few flyers (A5) - much more convenient for people to hand me in the street, big enough to get information across on, not to big to big cumbersome for me and (presumably) cheaper than A4 to print in bulk - a postcard (A6) from a colleague who went on a lengthy vacation - business cards - some (but admittedly not all) of which are A8 - and lots of A4 - it's what I print out when I need a hardcopy. I don't currently have any A3 on my desk, but I've used it in the past when I have complicated diagrams to analyze and want to get it all on one sheet. I often print out documents as 2 (or sometimes even 4) pages to one A4 sheet to make it easier (and more tree-friendly) to read away from my computer - this works OK because the aspect ratio remains the same.
- Symbiote 12y ago
  Not true, at least outside the US where using other sizes is easy. It all "just works", so it's used all the time. Age 5, my school work book is B4 size. I can glue the a A4 sheet (or two A5 sheets) the teacher hands out. A little later, and the work books are B5 sized. A4 sheets fit in if folded. I want to make a poster at home. I set the document size to A2, design it, press print, and four A4 sheets are printed, exactly the right size. I can change it to any other A-size very easily. I want to photocopy / print some A4 documents, but save paper. Two (or four) sheets fix neatly on one page. Or, I can enlarge it to A3 — most photocopiers in most offices have A3 paper in one of the drawers for this. There's an A3 laser printer in my office, it's useful. From my desk, I can see things laser-printed by me in A4 and A3; things produced in A5 and A6; and notebooks in B5. If I need a poster in A1 or A2 size there's a printer upstairs.
- ajuc 12y ago
  A4 and A5 are used very often, for example for notebooks in school.
currysausage 12y ago
Not every European is/was happy with the A series of paper formats. Jan Tschichold (1902—1974), arguably one of the most influential typographers of all time, strived against it, arguing it was unpleasant for office use (comments by jgrahamc and johnchristopher go into this direction) and downright unsuitable for book use. I can't seem to find an English-language version of his A series rant (found in Erfreuliche Drucksachen, p. 111), but for anyone interested in traditional book layout, this (English-language) essay is a goldmine: http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/reese/classes/artistsbooks/jantschichold.pdf http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/reese/classes/artistsbooks/... (pp. 39 f. touch on the A series).
transfire 12y ago
I think I'd be okay with A4 if it were a bit smaller. Pegging A0 to a sq. meter is the problem. That's just arbitrary.
peapicker 12y ago
I personally want Japanese B5 notepads -- they are the perfect dimensions. I ran out a long time ago, and they are hard to come by in the US.
- raimondious 12y ago
  They're cheap at Muji. http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks/recycled-paper-note-double-ring-b5-plain-80.html http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks/recycled-paper...
- kaybe 12y ago
  If you really want to have it, you can order directly from Japan. You can use a reshipping service like http://honto.jp/ http://honto.jp/ and have the company you buy from ship to them if they don't ship internationally. They also help you order things if you don't know the language. Then it just comes down to the import rules of the US (seems like you're fine with anything below 200$ of value, but I'm not sure [1]). Yes, it's a bit cumbersome, but in this glorious age of the internet there should be nothing (legal) that cannot be procured. [1] https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/501/kw/post/sno/1 https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/501/kw/post/sno...
- SonicSoul 12y ago
  thanks! Just ordered a few of those from jetpens. Size/quality looks very promising
- ics 12y ago
  As another poster said, Muji has very affordable ones in a variety of styles (gridded, lined, plain, record). They're very thin and cheap, but I love them and have been using them for years. Alternatively if you're near a Kinokuniya (they have a couple US locations) they have a stationery section with other common brands (e.g. Campus).
dlu 12y ago
Yay math. But we're not changing. Were you around for us trying out the metric system? If you really want to start, let's begin with QWERTY keyboards
jws 12y ago
His table at the end purporting to show a plethora of strange aspect ratios is just his rounding errors. When repeatedly folding paper, the aspect ratio alternates between two numbers. (Consider after two foldings, each side is half the original. Same aspect ratio.) Unless of course you have soulless A series paper, then they are all the same.
xorcist 12y ago
While we're at it, couldn't we also wish for the US to adopt the ISO standard date format, YYYY-MM-DD That would be great. Thank you.
jellicle 12y ago
Everyone who supports the A* sizes of paper (start with a square meter because it's nice and clean, then just declare that all other paper uses that humankind might ever need should be specific fractions of that square meter and no other sizes are ever needed) should also support Swatch time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time Alternately, if Swatch time seems dumb to you, then you might also accept that paper should be sized to fit a usage, not just a "clean" measurement scheme. Does this hold true for other things as well? Should all cell phone screens be sized to be a specific fraction of a square meter, just because it's "cleaner"? Or should they be sized to fit, you know, people's hands and pockets? And for that matter, the math isn't even right! Because SQRT(2) is not rational, you'll get noticeably different sizes if you actually started with 4A0 and sliced it in halves until you got to A10 versus directly cutting an A10 piece. That should drive you math-obsessives crazy.
- baddox 12y ago
  I agree that fanaticism over an arbitrary paper standard seems silly, but I don't buy your analogy. The reason Swatch time probably feels dumb is that the notion of changing the time format used by essentially the whole globe is itself dumb. The transaction costs are almost certainly higher than any benefits.
transfire 12y ago
One could just imagine Letter to be 11" x 7.7781" (preserving the sq. root ratio) but with a 0.7219" side margin for bindings. Feel better now?
karimatiyeh 12y ago
A comical yet accurate take on why A4 is the best paper size : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9EsAD2jGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9EsAD2jGQ. You'll enjoy this. The tone is great as well.
- ericglyman 12y ago
  Today I learned something new. And I was entertained. Tip of the hat.
- turbostyler 12y ago
  Yeah, funny how this video was on Reddit's frontpage a few days ago, and this dude just happens to write a blog post about it without even mentioning the video.
monochromatic 12y ago
> But what do you end up with folding the US Letter? Let’s see: > 216 mm x 279 mm ratio: 1.291 > 139 mm x 216 mm ratio: 1.554 <- What? > 108 mm x 139 mm ratio: 1.287 <- Ah.. > 69 mm x 108 mm ratio: 1.565 <- HUH!? > 54 mm x 69 mm ratio: 1.278 > 34 mm x 54 mm ratio: 1.588 > 27 mm x 34 mm ratio: 1.259 <- Oh god... These ratios, in fact, just go back and forth between two values (because when you cut a piece of paper into fourths, it has the same aspect ratio as the original). The other differences are just rounding errors. He notes rounding errors earlier in the post, so I'm not sure why they get called out in this example with "HUH!?" and the other comments.
- glitch 12y ago
  Agreed. The article writer really failed in that section. It's just rounding error. Based on his written reactions there, I honestly don't think he realized it was oscillating at the time he wrote that part. It seems like he just didn't want to bother to correct himself after the fact or is just intentionally being stupid.
- GhotiFish 12y ago
  full disclosure. I actually didn't notice the oscillations myself. However, I was just very absentmindedly skimming, It's a little more unbelievable for the author, the one doing the calculations, to miss this.
brudgers 12y ago
And what about US legal? Or Architectural Sizes? Nevermind folios (and quartos and ovtavos). It's a big diverse world with room for all sorts of paper applications. [Architectural Sizes]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Architectural_sizes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Architectural_sizes [folios]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folio_%28printing%29#Size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folio_%28printing%29#Size [big diverse world]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Other_sizes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Other_sizes
- glitch 12y ago
  It is a big, diverse world. And various, special use-cases are best addressed with different aspect ratios. But, to me, the point of ISO 216 adoption in place of US Letter (and other common sizes) is about having a general-purpose/common-use aspect ratio with inherent properties that help simplify things across the board for a lot of people. If it wasn't already used so much elsewhere, I'd be a "harder sell" (even to myself). But, it is used elsewhere... a lot... and has beneficial properties too. Trying to clean up the mess and simplify the chaos. Remove the unnecessary extra baggage associated with other systems. Aside: If I was king of Sun III (previously known as Earth), my replacement for "US Legal" sized paper would be 210mm × 340mm. This maintains the width of A4, but gives it a length similar to that of US Legal. Moreover, it achieves this using the Golden Ratio. Calling it φA4 for the time being. US Legal..: 8.5” × 14” (Before mm conversion.) US Legal..: 216mm × 356mm —> approx. 1.647:1 ratio A4........: 210mm × 297mm —> approx. 1.414:1 ratio φA4.......: 210mm × 340mm —> approx. 1.619:1 ratio See http://i.imgur.com/S0rrRnP.png http://i.imgur.com/S0rrRnP.png for an example. Aside: Apparently the 210mm × 340mm size is used for some folded paper towels and some pastry bags already. Also, Mexico's "Government-Legal" is 216 mm × 340 mm — same height as my proposal but with a 6mm width difference. (Theirs matches US Letter/Legal width of 216mm instead of the A4 width of 210mm.)
  - brudgers 12y ago
    Are you volunteering to transition Sun III's physical files cabinets, storage boxes, warehouse shelving? To reconfigure their printers, rewrite their report software etc.? There's a lot of friction and it all takes place on the ground, unlike translating Python 2 programs to handle Unicode, there's no cloud service model that facilitates the transition. The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Grace "disputed attribution" Hopper
state 12y ago
I have been keeping all of my notes on B5, while living in the US, for the past ten years for this exact reason. 8.5 x 11 is simply not an attractive shape.
PythonicAlpha 12y ago
I know that there is a continuing fight between US measurements (inch, ...) and European measurements (Metric system) -- but I really was shocked, when a printer wanted to have "US letter" pages. The advantage of the A-System is so big over the US letter system, that I don't understand that there are still countries that don't want to adopt it. Just ask your photo copier manufacturer! It also can't be reasoned, that so many cars or traffic signs have to be changed ...
mark-r 12y ago
And let's not even get started on standard(?) photo sizes! Who came up with that mess?
agrona 12y ago
I went into a Fedex/Kinko's in the US, to try to print something on A3. They looked at me as if I had just asked them to sell me a unicorn. They then offered to custom cut a piece of paper for what I'd approximate as several tens of thousands of percent markup.
robaato 12y ago
My personal rant is that I want a global setting on every printer to override differences in requested page size. For example, being in the UK, I print to A4, and that is the only size of paper I have available for my printer. If I print stuff from browsers, or documents from US people which are set to page size Letter, I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO GO TO THE PRINTER AND PRESS A BUTTON TO PRINT ON THE ONLY PAPER AVAILABLE (A4). Just print everything on A4 please - ignoring page size requests (or at least let me choose the option to do this override). This is such a pain, and occurs very frequently. Am I alone? I rather assume the inverse applies for US people. It could be a setting on the printer queue, but then you are at the risk of every operating system or indeed application such as browser getting it wrong... Printer manufacturers please just add a setting to your options - pretty please...
- Tepix 12y ago
  Haven't had that happen for ages...
Tepix 12y ago
Is A4 sized paper hard to get hold of in the US?
- kw71 12y ago
  I tend to buy two reams A4 for each ten reams Letter, but each time availability and pricing varies. OfficeMax used to have Boise A4 paper around $8 a ream, but now they are selling a Hammermill paper for $11. Never in the stores of course.
yummybear 12y ago
As a young european the printer message "Please insert letter", or something similar, always confused the hell out of me when printing certain PDFs. Letter? What letter?
AnonJ 12y ago
The post seems to be inspired by a hot question on Math StackExchange http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1143132/is-there-a-size-of-rectangle-that-retains-its-ratio-when-its-folded-in-half http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1143132/is-there-a-s... . Probably the author should also acknowledge it?

320 points by willvarfar 12y ago

Anecdote: the office management/finance/HR people in the european office where I work really, really hate US Letter formats, because they don't really fit in "normal" binders. They're the ones who really suffer from this, because they're the only people who deal with paper format documents these days, I guess.

couchand 12y ago
I can feel their pain: I have two binders from school in Germany that don't fit on the shelf with my other (US-sized) binders. They're destined to be lying down for the rest of their days.
sschueller 12y ago
Also the fact that the US punches 3 holes instead of 2 or 4
smackfu 12y ago
US Letter is shorter than A4, so it seems like they should fit fine? I guess it's 6mm wider but that is not much.
- vmarsy 12y ago
  For some important documents that you want to preserve and/or don't want to pierce there is a solution: store it in a plastic sleeve like this one: http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/1777660007/100-X-A4-CLEAR-font-b-PLASTIC-b-font-PUNCH-PUNCHED-POCKETS-font-b-FOLDERS-b.jpg http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/1777660007/100-X-A4-CLEAR... If you happen to receive US letter sized paper, it won't fit because of the width, that is too much for these, and they get crumpled.
- johansch 12y ago
  Never underestimate the level of OCD in good finance/office management people. :)
mjevans 12y ago
It's worse over here in the US. At least in Europe the paper doesn't require a different shelf height when dealing with printed materials from 'across the pond'. I would find it ever so sensible if we would just let imperial measures die over here so we could end the pain of international business.
lobster_johnson 12y ago
As a European, I would also like to point that the U.S. doesn't use the Letter format exclusively. Bills, in particular, come in all sorts of weird formats. Things like electricity bills sometimes come in long, narrow formats that don't fit in any kind of binder!

anonu 12y ago

I've lived in the US and also in a country that used the A-series extensively. While I've always appreciated the beauty and math of the A-series, I find the aspect-ratio of the US Letter paper to be much more appealing. A4 tends to be too long and too narrow.

skore 12y ago
From the article: > US Letter: 216 mm x 279 mm > A4: 210 mm × 297 mm so it's 18mm longer while being 6mm narrower. At that small a difference, I would assume that a preference of one over the other is similar to that of metric vs. imperial - the one you were raised on just seems right. Which one did you grow up with?
- jgrahamc 12y ago
  I grew up with the A sizes of paper and agree with the parent comment. When I moved to the US I was pleasantly surprised by the size/shape of US Letter sized paper.
- eterm 12y ago
  But it is both 18mm and 6mm narrower, so it goes from 1.414 to 1.29 in terms of ratio. In other words A4 seems 10% narrower in terms of shape, which isn't insignificant. Having said that, I'd rather keep A4 given the useful properties described in the article.
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  For what it's worth: I am a European, still living in Europe and surrounded by A4 and I envy American's US Letter format. I almost always have the feeling that A4 is too big.
- nileshtrivedi 12y ago
  That's a 9.5% difference in the aspect ratio. I don't think that's small.
- realusername 12y ago
  It's just that you can resize everything while still keeping the same portions with the A* paper while with the US formats you just have to redesign everything.

talideon 12y ago

I've tried in the past to explain how awesome the sqrt(2) ratio used as the basis of DIN/ISO page sizes is, but there are some very dumb people on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821947

mrottenkolber 12y ago
Haha that thread is great... good old metric system.
- talideon 12y ago
  It was like talking to a brick wall. A very dumb brick wall that couldn't get it through their head that the units didn't matter, and that what mattered was the ratio.
  - willvarfar 12y ago
    The A0 being 1m^2 is important too, if you're ordering paper by area?
    - talideon 12y ago
      Yeah, but that's really a different argument. Once you get the ratio argument, you get the utility of the system.
    - RVuRnvbM2e 12y ago
      The A0 being 1m^2 is important because paper weight is given in gsm - grams per square metre. Thus when calculating postage weight by counting the number of sheets you can calculate that, for example, the weight of one A4 sheet is 1/16 the gsm of the paper - 1/(2^4).
      - michaelhoffman 12y ago
        Oppose the totally insane system used along with U.S. paper sizes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_density#Basis_weight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_density#Basis_weight In order to figure out the actual mass of a sheet of U.S. paper from the reported basis weight, you must know how many sheets of paper were in the "basis ream" and what dimensions they were. The basis ream sheet dimensions may have nothing to do with your final sheet of paper, and the number of sheets varies too.

colechristensen 12y ago

This is one of those things that seems technically correct (the best kind of correct) but practically ... meh. The benefit exists but is barely enough to get anyone entrenched to actually change. Much like the common usage of the US Customary units, nothing is going to actually change.

talideon 12y ago
It has other useful effects: it makes it easier to standardise containers for the sheets, as well as their division, amongst other things. And all this from the simple use of a ratio.
- colechristensen 12y ago
  There's just a threshold of utility that has to be passed in order for a new standard to take hold. How much would the US really benefit from switching? How much would switching cost? The efficiency gained wouldn't come near to the efficiency lost during the switch, and nobody really cares all that much about paper size.
  - talideon 12y ago
    I'm not making the argument that the US should switch (though I wish they would), I'm just stating that the advantages are deeper than they appear at first blush.
RVuRnvbM2e 12y ago
Except, you know, everywhere that isn't the US.
justincormack 12y ago
Odd how every single country in the world has adopted it, except for the US and Canada. They all changed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_standard:_ISO_216 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_s...

StefanKarpinski 12y ago

When someone claims uncritically that the ratio of any two integers is √2, I get a little edgy. I'm also having a hard time following this simplification: A / √A = A × A / A = A Huh? This only holds if √A = A = 1. I haven't checked the rest, but this doesn't give me much confidence. Of course, knowing those Europeans, these sizes do probably make tons of sense on paper (see what I did there?), even if this isn't the best explanation of it.

talideon 12y ago
There's nothing crazy here. It just means that if the length of the long side is √2 times the size of short side. That has the nice property that you can bisect the sheet and get two smaller sheets where the ratio between the long and short edges is maintained, which makes it standardising a whole bunch of other things much more straightforward.
- amalcon 12y ago
  I believe that gp's point is that this is impossible, what with √2 being an irrational number. It is pretty close (4 significant digits), but of course not exact.
  - talideon 12y ago
    It's not that big a deal: once you have a basic page size that's close enough, it's just a matter of slicing it in two. In practice, any error is too small to matter.
delinka 12y ago
The article's not claiming that the ratio of any two integers is √2, he's claiming that when the ratio of the lengths of the sides (the aspect ratio) is √2 that it's easy to keep that ratio with smaller pages by cutting the longer dimension in half. As for your equation above, A/√A != A x A / A, but I'm not seeing where in the article you got this either.
- deleted 12y ago

mrottenkolber 12y ago

I have to note that A4 (what goes in a standard printer) is just a shitty format for documents. There is no way to get a proper layout done, you basically need two columns to use a reasonable amount of space with regards to font size and text body layout, which leads to other problems. There is a very good reason you don't see any A4 books. A5 works OK for book layouts but still is too wide actually... A5 booklet printed: http://mr.gy/blogopy/max/3589981109.html http://mr.gy/blogopy/max/3589981109.html

redcodenl 12y ago
The point is: An A5 booklet on A4 is the same as A4 booklet on A3, etc.
- mrottenkolber 12y ago
  No its not. In fact its completely unrelated because when making book you should care for aspects like font size and text body layout which follow an ergonomic perspective. E.g. the same booklet layout on a3 wouldn't work at all because the font would be huge. Keep the font size small and you have really long lines...
  - willvarfar 12y ago
    I regularly print out A4 documents two-to-a-page side-by-side on my office printer. It saves paper, its easier to carry around, and it works just fine. No distortion. If your docs are US Letter, how well do they print out scaled down two-to-a-page side-by-side?
    - theOnliest 12y ago
      I do this a lot for printing out (research) articles, and the answer is that the text gets shrunk much more, and the margins increased to account for the difference. (This actually turns out to be useful in practice, since there's much more whitespace to take notes in.)

sebgeelen 12y ago

Is this the place to bring "inches vs cm" on the table ? :p

talideon 12y ago
Totally orthogonal argument. It's the ratio that matters.
snarfy 12y ago
It's not the place, but not that you've brought it, as an American I say imperial units can go die in a fire.

nakedrobot2 12y ago

Why did Americans simplify and streamline the English Language, but they didn't bother with all of the systems of measurement?

chiph 12y ago
Now you know how hard it is to replace a legacy system. :) Actually, we're going the wrong way. The last highway sign I saw in metric was on I-95 northbound. They replaced it a couple of years ago (too old - the reflective material was worn out), and the new one only has miles on it. There's a short highway in Arizona (I-19) that is only signed in kilometers (it runs to the Mexican border), and there are calls to replace them all with distances in miles.
rsynnott 12y ago
Americans didn't simplify and streamline the English language, certainly not intentionally. If you're talking about the spelling thing, there were no standard spellings at the time when the US broke away from Britain; standards were independently created at a later date.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  Early American dictionaries deliberately set out to simplify spellings (and later editions made more aggressive simplifications that didn't catch on).
ajuc 12y ago
English is far from being streamlined. In fact it's the only language I know that requires you to learn how to pronounce EACH word. Most languages only require learning how each letter sounds, and maybe a few dozen di/trigraphs, the rest is regular. Not so in English.
- sswezey 12y ago
  You have to learn to pronounce each word with Chinese too.

glitch 12y ago

I really wish we'd switch to the ISO-216 sizes. A4 to A3 is so much more enjoyable and painless than Letter to Tabloid. This kind of thing came up often while making posters for campus because it was cheaper to NOT print out all of the posters on Tabloid. Rather, using a mix of Tabloid (for the important poster posting spots) and Letter (for unimportant spots and as flyers for handout). Always ended up having to spend more time to make two layouts because of it. And A4 to A5 for booklets without having to re-layout the document is a huge plus too! And for books, I like to use B4* to fold in half. (B5 pages are nicer than A5 pages for the kind of books I tend to read.) The proportions are all the same, so it just works! One layout, many paper size (of the same proportion) possibilities! Edit: Additional note with regard to the book publication (depending on printing and binding method used)... Sometimes/often this is printed on something like A3 size for bleeding and with crop marks. The A3 paper is then folded and cut, so that the pages become B5 size. (Signatures essentially composed of folded B4 as a consequence of the cropping. There is of course difference between the outermost sheet and the innermost sheet in each paper signature, which is why it's all cropped at the end.)

mxfh 12y ago
Is there are reason that B5 sized paper sheets are only available as imports from Japan in Europe? The strict interpretation of the B series as a packaging format for the A series only seems somewhat archaic.
- glitch 12y ago
  Lack of demand in the States for ISO 216 sizes in general makes it so that relatively/comparatively few stock such paper in the U.S. When wanting to print to the edges (full bleed), publishers will often print on B sized paper sheets with crop marks for A size (and then crop the paper to A size) or similarly print on A and crop to B.
- Symbiote 12y ago
  B5 paper sheets don't seem to be easily available in the UK. B5 books are the most common size though, most of my school exercise books were B5 or B4 — that allowed me to glue in a sheet of A-sized paper, possibly folded in half. Why do you prefer B5 to A4 for paper?

higherpurpose 12y ago

A lot of US "standards" (only US uses them) should be banned.

sspiff 12y ago
There is nothing weird about national standards. Everyone does it. Germany has DIN, for instance. Even tiny Belgium has the NBN. Usually, these standards are either equivalent to international standards or are only relevant in the home country of the organization.

robinanil 12y ago

Nooo... Dunder mifflin will be out of business!

melchior 12y ago

Another fun fact: An A0 piece of paper has an area of exactly 1 square meter.

minikites 12y ago
It says that right in the article.

robinanil 12y ago

Nooo... Dunder mifflin will be out of business!

Aoyagi 12y ago

Next step: metric measurement units everywhere. I've been waiting for that for decades. If "dozens" would die as well, even better.

rikkus 12y ago
But I don't want my eggs in boxes of 5.
sergiosgc 12y ago
Counting in base 12 is much better than base 10. 12 has prime factors {2,2,3}, so you get 2,3,4 and 6 as integer divisors, not just 2 and 5. That's why dozens stuck as a counting unit on so many things, namely time (all the way back from Egyptians). You can even count using your fingers. Just count using your thumb pointing at each of the finger joints and the finger tip (you have two joints and one tip per finger and four fingers excluding the thumb). Actually, that's how Egyptians counted and that's why you get 12 hours in the realm of day and 12 hours in the realm of night. The only drawback is multiplication tables. If I tend to forget the multiplication table for 7 and 8, memorizing tables for 11 and 12 would be nightmarish :-) P.S. This is obviously tongue-in-cheek. While it may be marginally better, switching costs mean the optimal course of action is to stay at the local maximum and avoid switching.
- transfire 12y ago
  I've done some extensive analysis of number systems (almost enough to write a book on the subject) and come to the conclusion that the best are senary (6) and quaternary (4). Six has all the benefits of twelve, save the extra divisor of 2 (and thus 4), but that is easily remedied by use of the square (36) when required. Quaternary may seem an odd choice, but the square is 16, so one naturally learns hexadecimal without doing hardly any extra work --you just pair up the digits. If your curious, duodecimal and octal come in after these and decimal falls to fifth place, which is fitting since its main advantage is divisibility by 5. :-)
  - jessaustin 12y ago

phragg 12y ago

Let's work on a demand for a metric standard instead of this..

acd 12y ago

Please ban letter size, ever been at the printer realsing nothing printed and facing PC Load letter message? Ever been in a foreign country trying to find your home countries legal size of paper in a local store? I think we should switch to metric, a4 paper and right hand driving.

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
All of the countries using US Letter already drive on the right hand side...
- ekimekim 12y ago
  I think the sentiment was "standardize on the majority", not "everything the US does is wrong".

allendoerfer 12y ago

The USA and the EU are currently negotiating a free trade agreement [0]. I would say call your representative to get it on the list. Not to get too political here, but that would be much more beneficial than much of the other stuff that is already on it, where usually the lower standard succeeds magically. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investm...

todd8 12y ago

I enjoy working with paper. My favorite notebooks are ISO A4 size because they give me a bit more vertical room and still fit well in my backpacks. The issues that come up with regard to US Letter size paper seem to be: 1) It's not metric -- yes that's true, but A4 is 210mm x 297mm. These numbers seem completely arbitrary and don't take advantage of the metric system. I wish the US was on the metric system, but it's not so 8.5 in by 11 inches at least has the advantage that it is measured in simple numbers with respect to standard measures in the US. 2) It's easier to store and work with A4 because it is one half of an A3 sheet -- however, US Letter is one half of the US Tabloid/Ledger size. The ANSI (American National Standards Institute) paper sizes in inches are A (8.5 x 11), B (11 x 17), C (17 x 22), D (22 x 34), etc. and share this advantage with the ISO standard. 3) The aspect ratio is is approximately sqrt(2)/2 for all paper in the A series, the B series, and the C series. But why is having but one shape of paper an advantage? Sometimes it's useful to have choices depending on the content to be printed on the paper. Furthermore, the ANSI paper sizes simply have two aspect ratios alternating as one increases paper size. It is argued that printing posters with corresponding flyers is easier with ISO paper sizes. But this is true with ANSI paper sizes: one would have to jump up two sizes from letter (ANSI A, 8.5 x 11 inches) to ANSI C (17 x 22 inches). So, for the case where one would like to print at ANSI B, the aspect ratio of the page is a bit different. Here we have, what appears to me, to be the first real advantage of ISO over ANSI paper, where we need to print a flyer at A4 and A5 (but not A6). However, this hasn't been a problem for me personally. I'm usually working with pages that have additional constraints. For example space for bindings or differences in margins between recto and verso sides of two sided printing. Whenever there are bindings involved the aspect ratio advantage goes out the window. 4) Every country uses ISO sizes, why not the US (and Canada and Mexico) -- well, this is oversimplifying things a bit. Take a look at the Wikipedia page for paper sizes. There are Japanese variants, German extensions, and Swedish extensions listed that deviate from the ISO standards. There are also Architectural sizes listed that are designed to have simple ratios for their aspect ratios. The idea that we would somehow be better off with fewer choices (just one) really for aspect ratio really strikes me as wrong. I like all the variety available in paper.

murbard2 12y ago
1) A0 is 1m^2

VLM 12y ago

HN effect killed the article, can't read it, have to estimate based on existing comments. Assuming they actually read it, of course. Paperless office, checking in here. Our printer is only used for people screwing around doing non-work related projects, printing school essays for themselves or their kids, real estate MLS records, car insurance forms, stuff like that.

smackfu 12y ago

Practically, the number of people who need to ever use a paper size other than letter/A4 is minimal. So any elegance is pretty much lost.

maffydub 12y ago
Hmmm... I'm not sure that's true. Looking around my desk (in London, UK) I have - a few flyers (A5) - much more convenient for people to hand me in the street, big enough to get information across on, not to big to big cumbersome for me and (presumably) cheaper than A4 to print in bulk - a postcard (A6) from a colleague who went on a lengthy vacation - business cards - some (but admittedly not all) of which are A8 - and lots of A4 - it's what I print out when I need a hardcopy. I don't currently have any A3 on my desk, but I've used it in the past when I have complicated diagrams to analyze and want to get it all on one sheet. I often print out documents as 2 (or sometimes even 4) pages to one A4 sheet to make it easier (and more tree-friendly) to read away from my computer - this works OK because the aspect ratio remains the same.
Symbiote 12y ago
Not true, at least outside the US where using other sizes is easy. It all "just works", so it's used all the time. Age 5, my school work book is B4 size. I can glue the a A4 sheet (or two A5 sheets) the teacher hands out. A little later, and the work books are B5 sized. A4 sheets fit in if folded. I want to make a poster at home. I set the document size to A2, design it, press print, and four A4 sheets are printed, exactly the right size. I can change it to any other A-size very easily. I want to photocopy / print some A4 documents, but save paper. Two (or four) sheets fix neatly on one page. Or, I can enlarge it to A3 — most photocopiers in most offices have A3 paper in one of the drawers for this. There's an A3 laser printer in my office, it's useful. From my desk, I can see things laser-printed by me in A4 and A3; things produced in A5 and A6; and notebooks in B5. If I need a poster in A1 or A2 size there's a printer upstairs.
ajuc 12y ago
A4 and A5 are used very often, for example for notebooks in school.

currysausage 12y ago

Not every European is/was happy with the A series of paper formats. Jan Tschichold (1902—1974), arguably one of the most influential typographers of all time, strived against it, arguing it was unpleasant for office use (comments by jgrahamc and johnchristopher go into this direction) and downright unsuitable for book use. I can't seem to find an English-language version of his A series rant (found in Erfreuliche Drucksachen, p. 111), but for anyone interested in traditional book layout, this (English-language) essay is a goldmine: http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/reese/classes/artistsbooks/jantschichold.pdf http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/reese/classes/artistsbooks/... (pp. 39 f. touch on the A series).

transfire 12y ago

I think I'd be okay with A4 if it were a bit smaller. Pegging A0 to a sq. meter is the problem. That's just arbitrary.

peapicker 12y ago

I personally want Japanese B5 notepads -- they are the perfect dimensions. I ran out a long time ago, and they are hard to come by in the US.

raimondious 12y ago
They're cheap at Muji. http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks/recycled-paper-note-double-ring-b5-plain-80.html http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks/recycled-paper...
kaybe 12y ago
If you really want to have it, you can order directly from Japan. You can use a reshipping service like http://honto.jp/ http://honto.jp/ and have the company you buy from ship to them if they don't ship internationally. They also help you order things if you don't know the language. Then it just comes down to the import rules of the US (seems like you're fine with anything below 200$ of value, but I'm not sure [1]). Yes, it's a bit cumbersome, but in this glorious age of the internet there should be nothing (legal) that cannot be procured. [1] https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/501/kw/post/sno/1 https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/501/kw/post/sno...
SonicSoul 12y ago
thanks! Just ordered a few of those from jetpens. Size/quality looks very promising
ics 12y ago
As another poster said, Muji has very affordable ones in a variety of styles (gridded, lined, plain, record). They're very thin and cheap, but I love them and have been using them for years. Alternatively if you're near a Kinokuniya (they have a couple US locations) they have a stationery section with other common brands (e.g. Campus).

dlu 12y ago

Yay math. But we're not changing. Were you around for us trying out the metric system? If you really want to start, let's begin with QWERTY keyboards

jws 12y ago

His table at the end purporting to show a plethora of strange aspect ratios is just his rounding errors. When repeatedly folding paper, the aspect ratio alternates between two numbers. (Consider after two foldings, each side is half the original. Same aspect ratio.) Unless of course you have soulless A series paper, then they are all the same.

xorcist 12y ago

While we're at it, couldn't we also wish for the US to adopt the ISO standard date format, YYYY-MM-DD That would be great. Thank you.

jellicle 12y ago

Everyone who supports the A* sizes of paper (start with a square meter because it's nice and clean, then just declare that all other paper uses that humankind might ever need should be specific fractions of that square meter and no other sizes are ever needed) should also support Swatch time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time Alternately, if Swatch time seems dumb to you, then you might also accept that paper should be sized to fit a usage, not just a "clean" measurement scheme. Does this hold true for other things as well? Should all cell phone screens be sized to be a specific fraction of a square meter, just because it's "cleaner"? Or should they be sized to fit, you know, people's hands and pockets? And for that matter, the math isn't even right! Because SQRT(2) is not rational, you'll get noticeably different sizes if you actually started with 4A0 and sliced it in halves until you got to A10 versus directly cutting an A10 piece. That should drive you math-obsessives crazy.

baddox 12y ago
I agree that fanaticism over an arbitrary paper standard seems silly, but I don't buy your analogy. The reason Swatch time probably feels dumb is that the notion of changing the time format used by essentially the whole globe is itself dumb. The transaction costs are almost certainly higher than any benefits.

transfire 12y ago

One could just imagine Letter to be 11" x 7.7781" (preserving the sq. root ratio) but with a 0.7219" side margin for bindings. Feel better now?

karimatiyeh 12y ago

A comical yet accurate take on why A4 is the best paper size : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9EsAD2jGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9EsAD2jGQ. You'll enjoy this. The tone is great as well.

ericglyman 12y ago
Today I learned something new. And I was entertained. Tip of the hat.
turbostyler 12y ago
Yeah, funny how this video was on Reddit's frontpage a few days ago, and this dude just happens to write a blog post about it without even mentioning the video.

monochromatic 12y ago

> But what do you end up with folding the US Letter? Let’s see: > 216 mm x 279 mm ratio: 1.291 > 139 mm x 216 mm ratio: 1.554 <- What? > 108 mm x 139 mm ratio: 1.287 <- Ah.. > 69 mm x 108 mm ratio: 1.565 <- HUH!? > 54 mm x 69 mm ratio: 1.278 > 34 mm x 54 mm ratio: 1.588 > 27 mm x 34 mm ratio: 1.259 <- Oh god... These ratios, in fact, just go back and forth between two values (because when you cut a piece of paper into fourths, it has the same aspect ratio as the original). The other differences are just rounding errors. He notes rounding errors earlier in the post, so I'm not sure why they get called out in this example with "HUH!?" and the other comments.

glitch 12y ago
Agreed. The article writer really failed in that section. It's just rounding error. Based on his written reactions there, I honestly don't think he realized it was oscillating at the time he wrote that part. It seems like he just didn't want to bother to correct himself after the fact or is just intentionally being stupid.
GhotiFish 12y ago
full disclosure. I actually didn't notice the oscillations myself. However, I was just very absentmindedly skimming, It's a little more unbelievable for the author, the one doing the calculations, to miss this.

brudgers 12y ago

And what about US legal? Or Architectural Sizes? Nevermind folios (and quartos and ovtavos). It's a big diverse world with room for all sorts of paper applications. [Architectural Sizes]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Architectural_sizes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Architectural_sizes [folios]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folio_%28printing%29#Size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folio_%28printing%29#Size [big diverse world]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Other_sizes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#Other_sizes

glitch 12y ago
It is a big, diverse world. And various, special use-cases are best addressed with different aspect ratios. But, to me, the point of ISO 216 adoption in place of US Letter (and other common sizes) is about having a general-purpose/common-use aspect ratio with inherent properties that help simplify things across the board for a lot of people. If it wasn't already used so much elsewhere, I'd be a "harder sell" (even to myself). But, it is used elsewhere... a lot... and has beneficial properties too. Trying to clean up the mess and simplify the chaos. Remove the unnecessary extra baggage associated with other systems. Aside: If I was king of Sun III (previously known as Earth), my replacement for "US Legal" sized paper would be 210mm × 340mm. This maintains the width of A4, but gives it a length similar to that of US Legal. Moreover, it achieves this using the Golden Ratio. Calling it φA4 for the time being. US Legal..: 8.5” × 14” (Before mm conversion.) US Legal..: 216mm × 356mm —> approx. 1.647:1 ratio A4........: 210mm × 297mm —> approx. 1.414:1 ratio φA4.......: 210mm × 340mm —> approx. 1.619:1 ratio See http://i.imgur.com/S0rrRnP.png http://i.imgur.com/S0rrRnP.png for an example. Aside: Apparently the 210mm × 340mm size is used for some folded paper towels and some pastry bags already. Also, Mexico's "Government-Legal" is 216 mm × 340 mm — same height as my proposal but with a 6mm width difference. (Theirs matches US Letter/Legal width of 216mm instead of the A4 width of 210mm.)
- brudgers 12y ago
  Are you volunteering to transition Sun III's physical files cabinets, storage boxes, warehouse shelving? To reconfigure their printers, rewrite their report software etc.? There's a lot of friction and it all takes place on the ground, unlike translating Python 2 programs to handle Unicode, there's no cloud service model that facilitates the transition. The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Grace "disputed attribution" Hopper

state 12y ago

I have been keeping all of my notes on B5, while living in the US, for the past ten years for this exact reason. 8.5 x 11 is simply not an attractive shape.

PythonicAlpha 12y ago

I know that there is a continuing fight between US measurements (inch, ...) and European measurements (Metric system) -- but I really was shocked, when a printer wanted to have "US letter" pages. The advantage of the A-System is so big over the US letter system, that I don't understand that there are still countries that don't want to adopt it. Just ask your photo copier manufacturer! It also can't be reasoned, that so many cars or traffic signs have to be changed ...

mark-r 12y ago

And let's not even get started on standard(?) photo sizes! Who came up with that mess?

agrona 12y ago

I went into a Fedex/Kinko's in the US, to try to print something on A3. They looked at me as if I had just asked them to sell me a unicorn. They then offered to custom cut a piece of paper for what I'd approximate as several tens of thousands of percent markup.

robaato 12y ago

My personal rant is that I want a global setting on every printer to override differences in requested page size. For example, being in the UK, I print to A4, and that is the only size of paper I have available for my printer. If I print stuff from browsers, or documents from US people which are set to page size Letter, I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO GO TO THE PRINTER AND PRESS A BUTTON TO PRINT ON THE ONLY PAPER AVAILABLE (A4). Just print everything on A4 please - ignoring page size requests (or at least let me choose the option to do this override). This is such a pain, and occurs very frequently. Am I alone? I rather assume the inverse applies for US people. It could be a setting on the printer queue, but then you are at the risk of every operating system or indeed application such as browser getting it wrong... Printer manufacturers please just add a setting to your options - pretty please...

Tepix 12y ago
Haven't had that happen for ages...

Tepix 12y ago

Is A4 sized paper hard to get hold of in the US?

kw71 12y ago
I tend to buy two reams A4 for each ten reams Letter, but each time availability and pricing varies. OfficeMax used to have Boise A4 paper around $8 a ream, but now they are selling a Hammermill paper for $11. Never in the stores of course.

yummybear 12y ago

As a young european the printer message "Please insert letter", or something similar, always confused the hell out of me when printing certain PDFs. Letter? What letter?

AnonJ 12y ago

The post seems to be inspired by a hot question on Math StackExchange http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1143132/is-there-a-size-of-rectangle-that-retains-its-ratio-when-its-folded-in-half http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1143132/is-there-a-s... . Probably the author should also acknowledge it?