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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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alt-text

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

Et.

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

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wait, the US genuinely doesn't use A4 etc.?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We have trouble fitting all our freedom on your kooky, internationally-recognized sizes

Here’s a comparison using the most sensible units possible:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ngl as a Canadian, I implicitly thought 8.5x11 was A4. Well that's dumb, we should switch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I’m British and you are not alone, worse still, I spent a year in the USA and never even noticed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Also, I'm pretty sure A4 runs through an American printer just fine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Aside from the 1 to √2 ratio, the area of A0 paper is exactly 1m². People behind ISO 216 thought of everyting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

From their website: "We're ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. We develop and publish International Standards."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Sadly, ISO in recent decade started to do bullshit. They don't pay for standard development, they don't employ anyone for standard development, they collect membership fees from national standards organizations, require payment to download most standards and don't allow to copy published standards. Also they retroactively paywalled a lot of standards.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

People behind ISO 216 thought of everyting

how to make a good standard:

step 1: copy from DIN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216#History

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well, Germans are pretty anal about standards (thankfully) and they do them right, so why not copy them?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

so why not copy them?

oh, I totally agree with you.

In fact standards are made to be copied. That's like the entire point of them.