Excellent points, John.
Indeed, I keep just a ream of A4 on hand. I never have been able to find
a decent supplier of DL envelopes and have just gone for the quarter
folds instead, which is faster than trying precision folding (at least
for me).
Yes, the old A4 standard of 2-hole punching is frustrating. It also puts
too much stress on just those two points of contact and the paper rips
out more easily. I think that's why one no longer sees two-hole punched
letter size. In the '50s, two hole or three hole was the big choice,
along with wide or collegiate ruling. Then five hole paper to fit either
binder came out and now I think that's nearly obsolete. I seem to recall
that the four-hole punch span fits entirely on letter size paper, though
barely. Of course, none of those match up with any existing three-hole
prepunches. And one cannot find A4 binders with letter size three-hole
ring spacings.
Adobe does a great job on "print to fit". At the College of Charleston,
I used to encourage my students to make their research posters in A0
size format and then PDF them. Our Hewlett-Packard printer used inch
sized paper rolls (we used 36 in) and the "print to fit" feature worked
swell to make something very close to a typical 36 in by 54 in poster! I
also kept a supply of A4 paper there for those who needed some. A poster
printed out on A4 (scaled down by "print to fit") then held at arm's
length indicates the readability of the full sized A0 poster at 2 m
viewing distance. That's about a normal viewing distance for poster
sessions in science, allowing for a table and a "first row of viewers"
standing in front of the intended reader.
I use OpenOffice which has a built-in PDF generator so I can use that
PDF feature. Most people cannot or at least won't go to that trouble.
But, if I'm printing on A4 for correspondance (which I do once every
couple of years), I just reformat my page size in OpenOffice and deal
with the size issue on the screen.
Jim
John M. Steele wrote:
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
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
