alt-text

It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).

Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:

The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram

[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]

ISO 216 A series papers formats

AO

A1

A3

A5

A7

A6

Et.

A4

Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.

Source: Financial Times

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    6 months ago

    No it’s 8.5 by 11.

    See? Easy. Also you really have to try to get your hands on something that’s a different size. 99 percent of printer paper is Letter.

    • Threeme2189@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      6 months ago

      99 percent of printer paper is Letter.

      Maybe in America. Over here you won’t be able to find Letter it’s all A4.

        • lud@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          6 months ago

          Pretty much the same is true everywhere else though. A4 is just extremely common. All documents are printed in A4.

          But if you want another size for a sign, blueprint or maybe a postage sticker it’s easy to get another size. If you want A5 just print the same thing twice on an A4 and cut it in half after or cut the paper in half first and then print on it.

          If you want A3 you will obviously need a bigger printer (or you just tape two A4 together if it doesn’t need to look good.)

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            6 months ago

            I think I screwed up the assignment somewhere? For some reason the tape sticks to my letter sheet but not my A4 sheet and my construction paper crayon drawing is still too big for them to create a proper border?

    • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      6 months ago

      8.5" is not any easier to divide than 297mm. Try dividing 8.5" by 8. What is that? 12 pebbles and 14 glibglobs each?

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      6 months ago

      The only time I ever encountered letter was when I bought the D&D starter set.

      I was confused as to why the paper had this weird size. Then I remember it being a game made in the US.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        Well that solves it if WOTC used it then we need to get rid of it. Burn it in a fire. And we’ll need a new standard now. We could use the ISO standard but Western Union just handed me a thousand bucks to base it off telegram cards. Oh well.