I never understood why we use ISO guidelines for everything in Chile, metric system and so on... except for paper sizes π€¦ββοΈ
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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And before you ask, of course there's an easy system for various sizes that all relate to each other.
What did you think? That we hadn't thought this through?
Let's decide on a global standard before everyone realizes it's cheaper to do business the old way, with pens, papers and filing cabinets.
Fun fact: ISO paper sizes are a transposition of German DIN (Deutsches Institut fΓΌr Normung) sizes.
The German's obsession for standards is their main usefulness to humanity.
Fun fact, there is a standard butt & a standard shit accoding to the DIN.
Their greatest usefullness, not "main". Some people would much rather have bratwurst than a4 paper.
I think this is a little bit outdated at least for the Philippines. Goverment documents now primarily use A4 to comply with ISO standards. Some places such as schools may sometimes use the letter size (commonly referred to as short size here) but A4 is now much more common.
Why does A4 have an odd number of millimeters? Why not 290, flat?
A0 is a square meter. Its sides are self similar, such that the ratio of long to short edge stays the same when you cut one in the middle, and thus create a new long and short edge.
Each cut produces two sheets of the next Ax number, so A4 is four times halved compared to A0, or a sixteenth of a square meter.
That property of being able to halve is achieved with a ratio of the square root of 2, so unfortunately the measurements in absolute numbers get pretty odd.
Definitions and math:
- A series paper has a height/width ratio of β2
- Each paper in the series is half the area of the last
- A0 has an area of exactly 1mΒ²
The answer is actually fairly interesting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#A_series
Since A series sizes share the same aspect ratio, they can be scaled to other A series sizes without being distorted, and two sheets can be reduced to fit on exactly one sheet without any cutoff or margins.
You'll like B series paper then
Canada should drive on the left to really stick it to the yanks.
Ho ho, let's not overreact
How would that even work? Do you expect the passenger to operate a shotgun with their left hand/eye? Just shove their entire body out the window?
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Surprised that many countries use the US version
Same, I figured 8 1/2 x 11 was yet another example of our uniquely pig-headed obstinance.
Damn, that Mercator projection making A4 look almost as big as Greenland...
Remember Africa is about three times larger than Canada
Pretty insane to consider that sort of scale, this projection really distorts reality
Wonder how big a3 is then
That's the neat part, it's twice the size of A4, and half the size of A2.
So almost 2 greenlands or 2 almost greenlands?
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Is that the Philippines out there all alone?
Oh, let's also remember that A4 is a member of beautiful variant of an "SI system for paper". Want a paper the size of an A4 folded double? We have A~~8~~5. Want something that folds perfectly to A4? A3. One more fold? A2.
- Statement: "I want a piece of paper that I can fold twice to get exactly a US letter size."
- Response: "You must be crazy."
Edit: Did a fat-fingering
What's the next step up after A0?
2A0, and next 4A0, but there are rarely used. From A0 you mostly print from rolls, so you define the width. Large offset printing presses use formats that allow multiple A sized pages, either single or double for binding, and the needed trims.j
I'm going to open the world's first 256A0 print shop
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I'm American and have worked in corporate offices all my life and grew up around the printing industry.
A4/SI is super common here too. "Letter" is just something used by home users. But very often A4 is sold as "Letter A4" right next to the other paper.
Now "legal" print format is a true abomination and unfortunately is much less likely to be easily replaced.
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