This is a very thorough explanation of what I consider a brilliant paper size standard. What genius to make the aspect ratio identical for each size, and to create smaller variants by cutting the larger one exactly in half.
There are two places where you can tell it's a bit dated though. The first is in declaring the TV aspect ratio as 4:3; it's just about universally 16:9 now. The second is the expectation that the U.S. would be converting to metric, that becomes less likely with every passing year.
The brilliance becomes obvious when you combine it with the envelope sizes. Mailing things in the US always ends with you having to awkwardly tri-fold papers and hope that you didn't botch it, so that the result will fit in your envelope of a non-standard size.
Meanwhile, anyone can fold an A4 perfectly in half and it will always fit perfectly in a C5 envelope. Paper can't be folded? Mail it in a C4 envelope instead. Think a C5 is too big? Get a C6 envelope and fold it twice.
All the parts fit perfectly into each other, and it's obvious how they fit. Any size paper can be mailed in any size envelope simply by folding it.
I'd argue that the International Standard Paper Sizes system is a case where a clever idea has been promoted beyond what is beneficial. There are a lot of use cases where the standard sizes are not optimal. I personally find the US Letter size handier than the A4, and 3x5 inch is vastly more convenient than A6 for index cards and pocket memo books. In Japan, most "B5" notebooks I see are actually considerably off standard in the measurements.
> The Legal format itself is quite rarely used, the notion that it is for “legal” work is a popular myth; the vast majority of U.S. legal documents are actually using the “Letter” format.
Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.? In Canada at least, lawyers often use a paper size even longer than legal format. It makes photocopying a huge pain because the glass plate isn’t long enough on ordinary copiers, and these extra long sheets don’t fit in standard file cabinets without folding, and forget about using binders. Nobody uses these ridiculous extra long sheets except (Canadian) lawyers.
So looking around more, this is interesting - historically US lawyers did use legal size, but in 1983 the Supreme Court instituted a rule to move all federal paperwork to letter size, and most states followed shortly thereafter if they hadn't already transitioned.
>> The Legal format itself is quite rarely used, the notion that it is for “legal” work is a popular myth; the vast majority of U.S. legal documents are actually using the “Letter” format.
> Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.?
I kinda randomly look at scans of trial court documents sometimes, and I don't think I've seen one that looked like it was printed on legal paper (but I've hardly been systematic and my sample has been minuscule).
However, all the printers at my office are stocked with legal size paper, and I sometimes would use it for printing diagrams were I needed a little more space to get everything to fit or tables that were a little wide (but not so wide that I needed to use tabloid paper). My mortgage statements from my bank legal size, as are my property tax notices.
My father was a lawyer and I was in his office a lot growing up. I'm pretty sure printed documents were always letter size, so they could fit in normal filing cabinets and folders.
Growing up the in the US the only place I ever saw legal-size paper was legal pads.
Not a lawyer, but have worked with lawyers in a law firm and government offices. Everywhere I worked did almost all legal work in letter format. I occasionally saw legal paper, but no more commonly than in non-law offices.
Digging around on the same page i stumbled into this which i think is a fun/interesting look at the history..though sounds like the ratio was in use even before its referenced here. Anyone know more about it?
"letter, written in 1786-10-25 by the physics professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (University of Göttingen, Germany, 1742–1799) to Johann Beckmann, seems to be the oldest preserved written reference to the idea of using the square-root of two as an aspect ratio for paper formats"
Excerpt of the English Translation -
"I once gave an exercise to a young Englishman, whom I taught in algebra, to find a sheet of paper for which all formats forma patens, folio, 4to, 8, 16, are similar to each other. Having found that ratio, I wanted to apply it to an available sheet of ordinary writing paper with scissors, but found with pleasure, that it already had it. It is the paper on which I write this letter, but to which, because since by cutting some of its original form may have been lost, I also add an uncut original. The short side of the rectangle must relate to the large one like 1 : √2, or like the side of a square to its diagonal.
This form has something pleasant and distinguished before the ordinary [form]. Are these rules given to the paper makers or has this form spread through tradition? Where does this form come from, which appears not to have emerged by accident?
Honoured wellborn forgive me this freedom."
> Based on the experience from the introduction of ISO paper formats in other industrialized countries at various points during the 20th century, it becomes clear that this process needs to be initiated by a political decision to move all government operation to the new paper format system. History shows that the commercial world then gradually and smoothly adopts the new government standard for office paper within about 10–15 years.
The article is obviously dated, but at this point that'd be such a waste of time and resources. Government has to be focused on digitization and paperless/electronic processes, ideally getting rid of photocopiers instead of upgrading them.
Had never heard the logic behind the ISO paper sizes before though, very cool!
One of the things I keep hearing from non-Americans is how dumb Americans are and then proceed to explaining the benefits of the metric system. I see this from random internet forums to Youtube comments, from news paper articles to talking to people in Europe. What people don't realize is that America is like a giant ship that has a ton of inertia to change. It is the world's largest economy with huge diversity of evolved shit that has piled up. It is difficult to clean it despite of the will. The US gov tried to convert America to the metric system unsuccessfully [1].
The US (NIST) in collaboration with international bodies lead the redefinition of SI units based on fundamental constants [2]. Furthermore, semiconductor industry, university labs, medical industry, etc. all use ISO standards and the metric system. The US semiconductor industry alone is larger than the GDP of Switzerland. I studied engineering in America and we used the metric system throughout with some problems in ANSI units for familiarization of the units - ultimately, the engineer needs to adapt to the company's unit system and not try to be a thorn.
I personally am tired of the rest of the world patronizingly explaining the advantages of the metric system to Americans - over and over. It is not that difficult of a concept and most technical people, engineers I know in the US already understand the benefits of the metric system. It is mildly annoying at best and condescending at worst. If we are in the unit system mess, there are a lot of things that still do not follow base-10 based units. For example, font type units (points) from Switzerland. Or the way we measure time. How come there aren't 10/100th units of a minute/hour commonly used around the world? A second is split into 1000 milliseconds but a minute is not split into 1000 seconds. Why this inconsistency? Why 360 degrees? If we didn't have 10 fingers, the entire decimal system is worse than base 12 or duodecimal system [3].
The problems faced by America are exactly the same type of problems if we want to convert the entire world to duodecimal system. It is next to impossible despite of clear advantages. Note that I am not defending the people that arrogantly want to stick to status quo - there are certainly people like that in the US.
Due to the US cultural influence over the world, the "outside world" often has to deal with Americans expressing distances, volumes, weights, temperatures etc in US units, especially in text. That is probably where the complaints comes from. You read something in a foreign language (English) that has become a lingua franca, and come across a unit expressed in what is not a lingua franca.
Perhaps the criticism is actually about US cultural dominance, which is highly benefitial to Americans.
If people say that Americans are stupid, I agree you have a right to be annoyed. But I hope people never stop to point out the merits of the metric system to Americans. That is a small price to pay for a cultural hegemony.
> Or the way we measure time. How come there aren't 10/100th units of a minute/hour commonly used around the world?
Because metric time failed to catch on. The French Republic used metric time for several years, but Napoleon went back to customary time.
In metric time, there are 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. That means that one metric second is 0.864 seconds.
The calendar still has 12 months, but each month is exactly 30 days, with three 10-day weeks. There are five or six holidays at the end of the year, depending on whether it's a leap year.
The months have names based on the seasons. That's why events in French revolutionary history referred to by dates such as "the 18th of Brumaire" and "the 9th of Thermidor."
You're sure about the point measure being a Swiss invention? I thought it comes from Italian and French renaissance typographers like Aldus Manutius and Claude Garamond. Just saying because last time the topic of what the Swiss have and haven't invented came up, it ended in a media campaign claiming Swiss origin to cough lozenges (vs the Finnish). And there's of course the long-standing habit of misappropriating the cuckoo's clock origin to be Swiss, when it comes from the neighbouring Black Forest region in Germany (and actually has greatly contributed to the burning of said forest for glass production). /s
PS. No reasonable people think Americans are dumb for either the reasons you stated, or any others; that would be dumb in itself. However, strawmans like that make for an excellent "us-vs-them" political agenda narrative.
Duodecimal measurement units are overcomplicated if you don't also use a duodecimal number system, and converting anybody to that is a far bigger challenge than just changing unit systems. The digits "10" will now mean 12! So we'd better scrap Arabic numerals at the same time to avoid confusion.
Another thing is that a large portion of the "metric" world isn't fully metric, using old-fashioned units like miles and pyeong and tsubo. Really, the whole metric vs non-metric debate comes down to how much non-metric people see in their daily lives, not any binary distinction between "always use metric" and "never use metric" or anything of the sort.
I'm going to go farther than you and say that US customary units are superior to metric in certain regards. A foot divided by three is 4 inches, a meter divided by three is 3.3333333333333333333333333 decimeters.
What annoys me is that the US gets singled out when the difference is one of degree, not kind. The UK still uses pints for beers, most countries still use their equivalent to feet in carpentry.
Don't forget significant figures like your science teacher taught you. 841 mm has only 3, and both answers are correct to 3 sig. figs. So it's correct.
Another way to see it. What dimensions should it have for you to deem it correct?
[+] [-] mark-r|5 years ago|reply
There are two places where you can tell it's a bit dated though. The first is in declaring the TV aspect ratio as 4:3; it's just about universally 16:9 now. The second is the expectation that the U.S. would be converting to metric, that becomes less likely with every passing year.
[+] [-] henrikschroder|5 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, anyone can fold an A4 perfectly in half and it will always fit perfectly in a C5 envelope. Paper can't be folded? Mail it in a C4 envelope instead. Think a C5 is too big? Get a C6 envelope and fold it twice.
All the parts fit perfectly into each other, and it's obvious how they fit. Any size paper can be mailed in any size envelope simply by folding it.
[+] [-] bananamerica|5 years ago|reply
Luckily, most countries in the world are not the US.
[+] [-] wrp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alister|5 years ago|reply
Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.? In Canada at least, lawyers often use a paper size even longer than legal format. It makes photocopying a huge pain because the glass plate isn’t long enough on ordinary copiers, and these extra long sheets don’t fit in standard file cabinets without folding, and forget about using binders. Nobody uses these ridiculous extra long sheets except (Canadian) lawyers.
[+] [-] polm23|5 years ago|reply
https://www.michbar.org/file/generalinfo/plainenglish/pdfs/8...
[+] [-] ardy42|5 years ago|reply
> Can anyone confirm that this is really the case in the U.S.?
I kinda randomly look at scans of trial court documents sometimes, and I don't think I've seen one that looked like it was printed on legal paper (but I've hardly been systematic and my sample has been minuscule).
However, all the printers at my office are stocked with legal size paper, and I sometimes would use it for printing diagrams were I needed a little more space to get everything to fit or tables that were a little wide (but not so wide that I needed to use tabloid paper). My mortgage statements from my bank legal size, as are my property tax notices.
[+] [-] polm23|5 years ago|reply
Growing up the in the US the only place I ever saw legal-size paper was legal pads.
[+] [-] gumby|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerbs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seven4|5 years ago|reply
"letter, written in 1786-10-25 by the physics professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (University of Göttingen, Germany, 1742–1799) to Johann Beckmann, seems to be the oldest preserved written reference to the idea of using the square-root of two as an aspect ratio for paper formats"
Excerpt of the English Translation -
"I once gave an exercise to a young Englishman, whom I taught in algebra, to find a sheet of paper for which all formats forma patens, folio, 4to, 8, 16, are similar to each other. Having found that ratio, I wanted to apply it to an available sheet of ordinary writing paper with scissors, but found with pleasure, that it already had it. It is the paper on which I write this letter, but to which, because since by cutting some of its original form may have been lost, I also add an uncut original. The short side of the rectangle must relate to the large one like 1 : √2, or like the side of a square to its diagonal. This form has something pleasant and distinguished before the ordinary [form]. Are these rules given to the paper makers or has this form spread through tradition? Where does this form come from, which appears not to have emerged by accident? Honoured wellborn forgive me this freedom."
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/lichtenberg-letter.html
[+] [-] hannibalhorn|5 years ago|reply
The article is obviously dated, but at this point that'd be such a waste of time and resources. Government has to be focused on digitization and paperless/electronic processes, ideally getting rid of photocopiers instead of upgrading them.
Had never heard the logic behind the ISO paper sizes before though, very cool!
[+] [-] emj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] terakhirx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkylin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark-r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] systemvoltage|5 years ago|reply
The US (NIST) in collaboration with international bodies lead the redefinition of SI units based on fundamental constants [2]. Furthermore, semiconductor industry, university labs, medical industry, etc. all use ISO standards and the metric system. The US semiconductor industry alone is larger than the GDP of Switzerland. I studied engineering in America and we used the metric system throughout with some problems in ANSI units for familiarization of the units - ultimately, the engineer needs to adapt to the company's unit system and not try to be a thorn.
I personally am tired of the rest of the world patronizingly explaining the advantages of the metric system to Americans - over and over. It is not that difficult of a concept and most technical people, engineers I know in the US already understand the benefits of the metric system. It is mildly annoying at best and condescending at worst. If we are in the unit system mess, there are a lot of things that still do not follow base-10 based units. For example, font type units (points) from Switzerland. Or the way we measure time. How come there aren't 10/100th units of a minute/hour commonly used around the world? A second is split into 1000 milliseconds but a minute is not split into 1000 seconds. Why this inconsistency? Why 360 degrees? If we didn't have 10 fingers, the entire decimal system is worse than base 12 or duodecimal system [3].
The problems faced by America are exactly the same type of problems if we want to convert the entire world to duodecimal system. It is next to impossible despite of clear advantages. Note that I am not defending the people that arrogantly want to stick to status quo - there are certainly people like that in the US.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_ba...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal
[+] [-] mongol|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiogenesKynikos|5 years ago|reply
Because metric time failed to catch on. The French Republic used metric time for several years, but Napoleon went back to customary time.
In metric time, there are 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. That means that one metric second is 0.864 seconds.
The calendar still has 12 months, but each month is exactly 30 days, with three 10-day weeks. There are five or six holidays at the end of the year, depending on whether it's a leap year.
The months have names based on the seasons. That's why events in French revolutionary history referred to by dates such as "the 18th of Brumaire" and "the 9th of Thermidor."
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar
[+] [-] tannhaeuser|5 years ago|reply
PS. No reasonable people think Americans are dumb for either the reasons you stated, or any others; that would be dumb in itself. However, strawmans like that make for an excellent "us-vs-them" political agenda narrative.
[+] [-] lopmotr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttepasse|5 years ago|reply
We cool internet people™ are, of course, using Swatch Internet Time.
[+] [-] msla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knolax|5 years ago|reply
What annoys me is that the US gets singled out when the difference is one of degree, not kind. The UK still uses pints for beers, most countries still use their equivalent to feet in carpentry.
[+] [-] app4soft|5 years ago|reply
> - The height divided by the width of all formats is the square root of two (1.4142).
> - Format A0 has an area of one square meter.
When we look on A0 papers on the market mostly it's size is 841 mm × 1189 mm, that is not correspond to this standard:
- Length Ratio: 1189/841 = 1.41379310345 (should be 1.4142)
- Area: 0.999949 m² (should be 1.0 m²)
P.S. There are few websites which are useful for retrieving various paper formats sizes.[0,1]
[0] https://www.papersize.org/a-paper-sizes.htm
[1] https://papersizes.io/a/
[+] [-] lopmotr|5 years ago|reply
Another way to see it. What dimensions should it have for you to deem it correct?
[+] [-] function_seven|5 years ago|reply
And it is! I mean, if you're not going to use an electron microscope to measure it :)
The real measurements should be 840.9mm x 1189.2mm, but I'll forgive them for the rounding.
[+] [-] zonefuenf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeddy3|5 years ago|reply
The "rules" was five simple points, you can't just ignore the ones that doesn't suit your argumentation.