Comment by umanwizard

Comment by umanwizard a day 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.

echoangle a day ago

A4 isn’t some random format, you can derive it with three pieces of information:

A0 is 1 square meter

An to An+1 means cutting the paper along the middle of the longer edge

Each An has the same aspect ratio

Those are pretty useful properties and precisely define the dimensions of A4.

Reply View 14 replies

therealpygon a day ago

Not sure where you got “random format” from the comments, but we (U.S.) also use a very precise method for defining the size of paper, which is 8.5x11 and legal as 8.5x14. For the US, both are sized to fit in the same standard envelopes. I’ve never thought, “boy, I really need half this sheet length-wise but made shorter to keep the same aspect ratio for this situation”, so while I can understand why that could make sense when creating an international standard, it isn’t more or less random or more/less precise than any other basis. Our basis simply evolved naturally from our system of measurement and our needs with countries we traded most closely, rather than as an international standard based on a different system of measurement that needed to be shared among numerous countries situated closely together.

Reply View | 0 replies
umanwizard a day ago

True, but I don’t understand why this would make letter size confusing to Americans. European office workers are not sitting around marveling at the mathematical elegance of the definition of A series paper. It just doesn’t matter in daily life.

Reply View | 7 replies
- tialaramex 20 hours ago
  
  > It just doesn’t matter in daily life.
  Like a lot of mathematics it does matter in your daily life but you actually just don't think about it because of course this works - unless you're an American and so no it doesn't.
  The A-series paper sizes mean everything scales very naturally. Poster? Pamphlet? It's just the same ratios again but bigger or smaller. There is a single design where this works, and that's why the A-series exists, you can't just pick anything, only this works.
  
  Reply View | 6 replies
  
  umanwizard 16 hours ago
  
  Can you explain concretely why it matters in daily life that I can cut the paper posters are printed on in half several times to wind up with paper of the size that letters are printed on, and that these have the same aspect ratio? Why would I ever want to do that / why should I care that it's possible?
  I'm not trying to be combative; I genuinely don't know.
  
  Reply View | 5 replies
rswail 21 hours ago

Not only that but C envelope sizes match the A size. So an A4 piece of paper fits a C4 envelope flat.
A4 folded in half (size of an A5) fits in a C5 envelope.
An ISO standard that makes sense and isn't based on different professions like "letter" vs "legal" vs "folio" and other US sizes.
But also the reason that, for example, screens have 80 columns, (also related to punch cards), but that was about the width of a "letter" page at 10cpi.

Reply View | 0 replies
ElevenLathe a day ago

Why is this useful if you want to write a letter?

Reply View | 2 replies
- echoangle a day ago
  
  For a normal letter, it probably doesn’t matter. But it’s useful in general and doesn’t make it worse for writing letters, so it’s still better to use than a specific letter format with worse properties.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
- [removed] a day ago
  
  [deleted]
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
eadmund 20 hours ago

> A4 isn’t some random format, you can derive it with three pieces of information …
You can derive letter paper with two pieces of information: 8½ and 11. Just having a laugh, of course — I do admire the A/B series, even if I wish that they were based on a square yard :-)

Reply View | 0 replies

diggan a day 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.

Reply View 2 replies

umanwizard a day ago

Right, 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?

Reply View | 1 reply
- diggan a day 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.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies