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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

  • Dr. Moose
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    357 months ago

    Letter is 215.9mm x 279.4mm lmao

    • @Maggoty
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      57 months ago

      No it’s 8.5 by 11.

      See? Easy. Also you really have to try to get your hands on something that’s a different size. 99 percent of printer paper is Letter.

      • @Threeme2189
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        327 months ago

        99 percent of printer paper is Letter.

        Maybe in America. Over here you won’t be able to find Letter it’s all A4.

        • @Maggoty
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          67 months ago

          Well yeah. The point is most people never have to interact with any other size.

          • @[email protected]
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            67 months ago

            Pretty much the same is true everywhere else though. A4 is just extremely common. All documents are printed in A4.

            But if you want another size for a sign, blueprint or maybe a postage sticker it’s easy to get another size. If you want A5 just print the same thing twice on an A4 and cut it in half after or cut the paper in half first and then print on it.

            If you want A3 you will obviously need a bigger printer (or you just tape two A4 together if it doesn’t need to look good.)

            • @Maggoty
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              17 months ago

              I think I screwed up the assignment somewhere? For some reason the tape sticks to my letter sheet but not my A4 sheet and my construction paper crayon drawing is still too big for them to create a proper border?

      • Dr. Moose
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        97 months ago

        8.5" is not any easier to divide than 297mm. Try dividing 8.5" by 8. What is that? 12 pebbles and 14 glibglobs each?

          • Dr. Moose
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            57 months ago

            Ah yes - a system that uses both fractions and decimals!

        • @Maggoty
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          7 months ago

          It’s 1.06 Which is close enough to just do 1 inch cuts. Super easy. No possible better way to do it.

        • @Maggoty
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          47 months ago

          I think we’re on different levels. I’m solely here to make fun of both groups thinking they’re superior.

      • @[email protected]
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        47 months ago

        The only time I ever encountered letter was when I bought the D&D starter set.

        I was confused as to why the paper had this weird size. Then I remember it being a game made in the US.

        • @Maggoty
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          17 months ago

          Well that solves it if WOTC used it then we need to get rid of it. Burn it in a fire. And we’ll need a new standard now. We could use the ISO standard but Western Union just handed me a thousand bucks to base it off telegram cards. Oh well.

    • @Reddfugee42
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      37 months ago

      Don’t measure it in tiny surrender units, measure it in large freedom units.

      • @HereIAm
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        17 months ago

        Now I don’t agree with the use of freedom units, but that’s pretty funny.

    • @enbyecho
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      27 months ago

      Excuse me, I believe you meant to say:

      215 57/64mm x 279 38/96 mm