this post was submitted on 28 May 2024

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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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

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] 3 points 5 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 5 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 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 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 5 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 5 months ago

The annoying "letter" paper size is for some unknown reason what windows always sets as the paper size unless I change it to A4 manually. Naturally if I forget the printer won't print. US paper sizing - annoying me on the other side of the Atlantic.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

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] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Let's not even start with the metric system (used everywhere) and the imperial system (used in the usa and some african countries).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The best part is the US Military and NASA both use metric. I love that fact.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Except for the UI.

During the Apollo program they had very limited computer capacity in the capsule and lander. Computers were huge machines back then and they had to fit one in a spaceship.

The Apollo computers used metric internally for all calculations. Anything shown to the astronauts however was in imperial, as metric was apparently too complicated for astronauts to comprehend. They had to waste precious computer capacity converting to imperial because even astronauts can’t handle anything else.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Not-super-fun fact: an 8.5 x 11 inch paper can be useful if you lack a ruler in an American office & you need to measure an inch or a foot.

If you fold the paper like in an image I'll try to attach, the hypotenuse is 12.01 inches.

Edit: then you fold the 12.01 inch side against the 11 inch side to get a 1.01 inch measurement

Not exact, but good enough if you need to know your neck size to buy a fancy shirt online - not that I would ever waste my corporation’s time that way!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And most people here know that an A4 is 21 (exactly) by 30 (roughly) cm, which you can use (surprisingly) use for measurement aswell.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

21x29.7

This number is permanently stored in my memory, just like 1€ = 6.55957F

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I didn’t know Euro and Farad were related :O