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It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).

Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:

The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram

[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]

ISO 216 A series papers formats

AO

A1

A3

A5

A7

A6

Et.

A4

Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.

Source: Financial Times

  • Kerb
    10·
    6 months ago

    almost all consumer printers are for a4.
    i had (rare) occasions where i wanted to print a picture for an a3 sized frame and was able to glue together two a4 prints.

    also, as far as im aware, books in a4 size actually consist of a3 sheets bound together in the middle. (same with other sized books)

    • bleistift2@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      almost all consumer printers are for a4.

      I never said A4 wasn’t the standard. I said it’s not a good one.

      books in a4 size actually consist of a3 sheets bound together in the middle. (same with other sized books)

      Let’s check. I grabbed four random German books from my bookshelf. If you’re right, the pages should either be roughly 30cm×21cm (A4) or 15cm×10.5cm [Edit: 21cm × 15cm] (A5).

      Book 1: 18cm × 11.5; book 2: 19cm×12.5cm; book 3: 20.5cm × 12.5cm; book 4: 24cm × 17cm. None of those conform to the standard.