I've used A4 size paper at home for 10 plus years, all paperwork I take to
work is A4, my daughter used it for her school homework, no one has
complained. Teachers at her school asked where the paper came from and were
told A4 is all we had. No problem from then on. If anything it educates
everyone in the US who comes across it, like the store clerk below. I buy a
whole box of 10 Reams of A4 from Diamond Paper in Sterling Virginia. I then
expense 50% of the cost to my company because I use so much of it in my
work.
The Metric Today newsletter is printed on A4 paper.
Mike Payne
Potomac Falls VA 20165
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Millet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, 29 May 2007 22:33
Subject: [USMA:38784] Re: Weird US paper sizes
I wonder if any of the US magazines or newspapers have adopted an A standard
for printing. I remember reading a few years back that there was a concerted
effort to flip the US paper industry onto the A standard but it never got
traction.
As a followup, I headed back to the bookstore and did manage to find a ream
of A4 regular copy paper, which I showed the cashier as an example of what
it looked like since she hadn't seen it before. She looked at it and then
tossed it out because "no one would use it". Fortunately, her reaction is
not typical of everyone :).
I noticed that our copiers and scanners are being fed by A size papers at
work as well. It will be interesting to see if the US ever switches over, or
if there has been any movement in that direction.
Anyone heard anything along those lines ?
Mike
On 5/29/07, Pat Naughtin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dear Mike,
To my mind there is no benefit in any of the paper sizes you mention over
the A series and B series of international Paper sizes (ISO 216).
Because A and B series paper sizes are coordinated to minimise waste when
cutting or folding many fewer trees need be cut to produce them and this
has
led to their success all around the world.
Here in Australia, we adopted the A series — especially A4 and A3 — for
almost all everyday paper uses. For example:
A4 is letter paper or for folding to make an A5 size book
A3 is for posters and for photocopying then folding to make an A4 booklet
A2 is commonly used for newspapers
A1 might be a wrapping paper
A0 at 841 millimetres by 1189 millimetres has an area of one square metre
The B series is not so common. My wife and I have only used it for music
manuscript paper for orchestral scores.
You will find Marcus Kuhn's excellent description of the A series paper
sizes at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emgk25/iso-paper.html>
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216
Geelong, Australia
61 3 5241 2008
Pat Naughtin is manager of *http://www.metricationmatters.com *an internet
website that focuses on the many issues, methods and processes that
individuals, groups, companies, and nations use when upgrading to the
metric
system. Contact Pat Naughtin at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*
On 2007 05 30 2:03 AM, "Mike Millet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
While walking into the bookstore at my local university today I was
looking at the bound spiral notebooks for a replacement because I'd filled
the previous one with all sorts of fun math equations.
This was an adventure in odd units, and I saw ten by eight, eleven by
nine, eight and a half by eleven, ten by thirteen, and probably a couple
other inch measures that I missed in the pile.
My question is why are there so many other inch formats besides the
standard 8.5x11?
And while we're on the topic, I also noticed that all our printers and
scanners and copiers at work can use the A4 series papers and the B series
SI paper formats. I was kind of surprised at this but I've never seen
metric paper sold or available anywhere in the US. It's nice to see it's
there though if the US ever decides to switch
For the record I settled on the 279mm x 228mm (11x9in) size :).
I also discovered that if you type 11in into Google and hit enter the
first thing you see is the conversion to centimeters. Apparently it's so
common to do that that Google just assumes that's what you want.
Mike
--
"The boy is dangerous, they all sense it why can't you?"
