From what I can tell 8.5 x 11 inch paper seems to be a standard size even outside the U.S. (maybe I’m wrong).
The UK has this same size paper but from googling UK office supply stores they call that size A4.
When and where did this become a standard? Especially with the rest of the world being on the metric system. Is it still 8.5 x 11 in Japan? Australia? France?
Egypt?
The Master speaks:
A4 size is slightly different than 8 1/2 x 11. It’s actual dimenions are 210 x 297 mm (8.27 x 11.69 in.)
A4 is metric. It measures 210 x 297 mm, which happens to be a ration of 1: the square root of 2.
210 x 297 roughly works out to 8 5/8 x 11 1/2 – close to the U.S. standard, but not quite.
It’s too confusing to try to explain how the measurements are worked out, so look here.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
Australia uses the A4 standard.
I think you are wrong this size (a.k.a. US Letter) and A4 are the two global standards, and I think US Letter is mainly used in North America, although it may be common in Japan/Phillipines/Latin America for all I know.
I know that in the multinational I work in the only time I ever run into the “why isn’t the damn thing printing? Oh - frigging printer is saying ‘Load US Letter’ - have to push the ‘Go’ button” is when I get something from the US or Canada.
The slightly different shape is the BEST thing about the whole exciting topic of paper sizes! It means that when someone sends a document lovingly created to EXACTLY fill an A4 sheet to the US, the poor sap receiving it has to spend an age tweaking the thing to exactly fit a sheet of US letter, or else accept that it’s going to look a bit crap when they print it. And the same when our US colleagues email a document over here that has been painstakingly hand-crafted to perfectly onto a sheet of US Letter. Beautiful, I tell you, beautiful.
Even photocopying US letter on a Euro machine is a bitch - the copier gets all confused by the odd original size and wants to enlarge it onto A3 or something equally stupid.
Just one of the weird little quirks of life in international business.
Wikipedia has a good piece on worldwide paper sizes.
The US government used to use a paper referred to as “government letter” that was 8 X 10½. Reagan, in one of his few good acts ;), changed to the use of 8½ X 11.
And our host himself wrote a piece about paper sizes a few years back: How did 8-1/2x11 and 8-1/2x14 become the standard paper sizes?.
In my last job in Ireland, I had to print out a load of US Letter-sized datasheets for distribution at a trade show in Boston. I called all the paper suppliers in Dublin, and nobody stocked it. In the end I had to pay extra for a paper company to cut it to size for me.
Many American programmers seem to think Canada follows the European standard, which has been a minor pain in the ass over the years when print jobs keep defaulting to A4.
I’m a proud Canadian, but I often identify as American when installing software, just to avoid hassles like this.
No, Japan uses Metric (ISO-216) sizes. It’s very frustrating - manila folders I brought from Japan don’t quite fit American filing cabinets. The paper itself usually fits, but just barely.
In case it’s not clear - A4, A3, etc. have a height:width ratio of sqrt(2):1. This is the only shape which, if cut or folded in half, becomes the same shape (i.e. the ratio does not change). A0 paper has an area of 1 square meter and a ratio of sqrt(2):1. Cut it in half and you get A1. Cut it in half 3 more times and you get A4. That means you can fold an A3 printout in half, or fold an A2 sheet twice, and they fit into A4 folders perfectly.
Sometimes it can be taken to extremes, such as the alleged standard dimensions of German toilet paper (A6). Interesting article here that contains that gem and more. Having used both, I must say that ISO 216 is truly a brilliant system.