To all of us in North America who use non-ISO paper sizes,
Markus Kuhn delivers the
internationally standardized bitchslap:
In the ISO paper size system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of two (1.4142 : 1). This aspect ratio is especially convenient for a paper size. If you put two such pages next to each other, or equivalently cut one parallel to its shorter side into two equal pieces, then the resulting page will have again the same width/height ratio...
The United States and Canada are today the only industrialized nations in which the ISO standard paper sizes are not yet widely used. In U.S. office applications, the paper formats "Letter" (216 × 279 mm), "Legal" (216 × 356 mm), "Executive" (190 × 254 mm), and "Ledger/Tabloid" (279 × 432 mm) are widely used today.
While all ISO paper formats have consistently the same aspect ratio of sqrt(2)=1.414, the U.S. format series has two different alternating aspect ratios 17/11=1.545 and 22/17=1.294. Therefore you cannot reduce or magnify from one U.S. format to the next higher or lower without leaving an empty margin, which is rather inconvenient.I'll leave the clever
"how many rods to the hogshead"-non-SI-units-bashing humor to the reader. He also gives some very useful (and slightly German)
advice for publishing electronically.
posted by Biggie at 2:50 PM 
