Jim, Good summary. For me the issue of accessories, file cabinets, file folders, binders, is compelling. I'd rather buy a case of letter size and a ream of A4 when I need it.
Also note in the US a case of A4 is 50 - 100% more expensive than a case of US letter. However, I would like to see a line of accessories designed to handle letter width and A4 length. That would facilitate either switching or using some of both in the same filing systems. Binders would have to use one punch system or the other however. Two holes on the long side really doesn't work for A4. Our European offices used a four-hole punch on 80 mm centers which is a quasi-standard in Europe. Finally, on envelopes, a #10 is 105 mm high. If you aim for folds of 104 mm, 98 mm, 98 mm, you can handle a 300 mm sheet (slightly more than A4, and have a slight lip to the first fold for opening. Of course, this precision is a PITA. It would be better to get DL or C5/C6 envelopes to use with the A4 paper. Adobe Reader's "print to fit" does a good job of handling the shrinks to fit A4 on letter or letter on A4. In fact, if you have a PDF converter, this may be preferable to changing paper size and margins and rescaling the document in Word or other word processors. ________________________________ From: James R. Frysinger <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, February 20, 2010 11:09:29 AM Subject: [USMA:46710] Re: Need to buy more paper for the home printer Let me address the last issue first, Carleton, since I've recently retired from a college faculty and thus know some of their foibles. When your son's instructors collect assigned reports, your son's reports will not fit neatly into the stack with his classmates' reports. Some professors will find that amusing but more likely (and more troublesome) will be instance by other professors to use standard size paper. It is fair game for instructors to set standards on such issues as typed versus hand-written, margins, line spacing, ink color, type font, single versus double-sided printing, staple location, covers or not, and paragraph layout issues such as indenting, etc. Your son will find little solace in administrative appeals against an instructor who insists on letter size paper. But it's easy enough to pick up a ream of "copy paper" in letter size to meet the needs of those insistent instructors. And, as I said, others may either be amused or not care about A4 versus paper size. Your A4 paper will be a snug fit in letter size file folders and some filing cabinets might be a problem. You will need to search hard for binders and perhaps for hole punches for A4. I suppose it is possible that some governmental bodies will object to your submissions to them on A4. If so, they are likely to be more intractable than those instructors mentioned above. You will have to fold your A4 papers in fourths, not thirds, to fit them into standard sized business envelopes. Or purchase appropriate envelopes by mail order. You will get to explain to a lot of people why your paper differs in size from that used by others around you. To you, this might be a pain or an opportunity. When stated in millimeters, both A4 and letter size have dimensions that are hardly what one would call "round numbers". Frankly, the bit about A0 paper having an area of exactly 1 m2 doesn't matter to anyone (well, maybe 3 or 4 people in the world). How often do you depend on the area of a sheet of paper in terms of square meters? The reproduction issue is facilitated by the square root of two relationship between height and width that causes A0 = 2 A1, A1 = 2 A2, etc., but that hardly comes up as an important issue in the life of most people. Think about how often you have used a copy machine. How often did you have to double or halve the size going from original to copy? What fraction of all the copies that you have made do those double- or half-size copies represent? I weighed these issues when ordering the stationary supplies for my metrication consulting business here in the U.S. and elected to use letter size. Jim Carleton MacDonald wrote: > I’m just about out of the U.S. letter-size paper I bought a while ago, and > need to buy more. > > > Staples has a deal on Hammermill A4 paper, $57.99 for a case of 10 reams. > It’s good multiuse paper suitable for use in inkjet and officejet printers as > well as for other uses. I’d rather get that. > > > What kind of difficulty, if any, might result from me using A4 paper in a > “letter” world? (For one thing, my son is in his last semester of community > college and may have to write a paper or two.) > > > Carleton > -- James R. Frysinger 632 Stony Point Mountain Road Doyle, TN 38559-3030 (C) 931.212.0267 (H) 931.657.3107 (F) 931.657.3108
