Paper size

There have been many standard sizes of paper at different times and in different countries.

International paper sizes

A comparison of different paper sizes

International standard paper sizes are now used in all countries except the United States, Canada, and some South American countries.

The international standard is ISO 216, which defines amongst others, A4. ISO paper sizes are all based on a single aspect ratio of the square root of two, 1:1.4142. Basing paper upon this ratio was conceived by Georg Lichtenberg in the eighteenth century, made law in Germany in the 1920s, but did not reach its culmination until the prevalence of photocopy machines from the 1960s made having all paper with the same aspect ratio far more convenient in scaling than any other system.

The largest standard size, A0, has an area of 1 m². A1 is formed by cutting a piece of A0 in half, which retains the aspect ratio. This particular measurement system was chosen in order to allow folding of one standard size into another, which cannot be accomplished with traditional paper sizes.

Brochures are made by using material at the next size up i.e. material at A3 is folded to make A4 brochures. Similarly, material at A4 is folded to make A5 brochures.

It also allows scaling without loss of image from one size to another. Thus an A4 page can be enlarged to A3 and retain the exact proportions of the original text, photograph or whatever. Office photocopiers in countries that use ISO 216 paper often have one tray filled with A4 and one filled with A3. A simple method is usually provided (e.g. one button press) to enlarge A4 to A3 or reduce A3 to A4. Thus an A4 brochure when open is A3 and can be placed on the copier and either printed directly onto the A3 paper or reduced to A4.

The ISO B series is a scaling of the A series; B1 is half way between A0 and A1 in area. The C series is half way between the A and B series of the same number; for instance, C0 is half way between A0 and B0. This way, C0 is slightly larger than A0, and B0 slightly larger than C0. This was intended to allow one to fit inside an envelope of the other. For instance, a letter written on A4 paper, the standard for this role, fits inside a C4 envelope. A C4 envelope can fit inside a B4 envelope.

The scalability also means that less paper (and hence money) is wasted by printing companies.

ISO 216 does not define any sizes larger than A0 and B0, but the German standard DIN 476 puts a factor in front of these (so 2A0 is twice the size of A0, 4A0 is four time A0, etc.).

Traditional paper sizes

Traditionally, a number of different sizes were defined for large sheets of paper, and paper sizes were defined by the sheet name and the number of times it had been folded. Thus a full sheet of "Royal" paper was 25 x 20 inches, and "Royal Octavo" was this size folded 3 times, so as to make eight sheets, and was thus 10 by 6.25 inches.

Some of the base sizes commonly used in the US were as follows (all in inches):

Atlas: 34 x 26

Imperial: 30 x 22

Elephant: 28 x 23

Royal: 25 x 20

Medium: 23 x 18

Demy: 22½ x 17½

Crown: (also known as Post): 20 x 15

Foolscap: 17 x 13½"

The sizes used in the UK were similar but in a few cases differed in detail.

The common divisions and their abbreviations include:

Folio, fo/f: 1 fold, into 2 pages

Quarto, 4to: 2 folds, into 4 pages

Sexto or Sixmo, 6to/6mo: 3 folds, into 6 pages

Octavo, 8vo: 3 folds, into 8 pages

Duodecimo or Twelvemo, 12mo: 4 folds, into 12 pages

Sextodecimo or Sixteenmo, 16mo: 4 folds, into 16 pages

Many of these sizes were only used for making books (see bookbinding), and would never have been offered for ordinary stationery purposes.

Current U.S. paper sizes

Current standard sizes of U.S. paper are a subset of the traditional sizes referred to above. Letter, legal, and ledger/tabloid are by far the most commonly used for everyday activities.

There is an additional paper size which has no ascertainable name, the 8-by-10½ inch paper that is used in America for children's writing and was prescribed by Herbert Hoover when he was Secretary of Commerce to be used for U.S. governmental forms. Apparently this would enable discounts from purchase of paper for schools. As photocopy machines later proliferated, citizens wanted to make photocopies of the forms, but as the machines did not generally have this size paper in their bins, they could not do so, thus Ronald Reagan had the U.S. government switch to letter size.

American resistance to the ISO paper sizes may be due to the larger resistance to the metric system, or the irrational fear that all existing paperwork would have to be redone on the new size paper, and stored in newly-purchased filing cabinets.

See also

• Punchhole - Filing holes

External links

• International Standard Paper Sizes (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html) by Markus Kuhn
• Web page on traditional paper sizes used in books, with reference tables (http://www.trussel.com/books/booksize.htm)

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