PAPER SIZES

1.  Introduction

In the world today, there are two main camps where paper format standardization is concerned. 

Both Canada and the United States still use the North American paper formats which are derived from the old English system while most of the world have converted to the use of the ISO paper formats, also known as the  DIN formats or collectively known as the metric system.

Singapore adopted the ISO  metric system of paper size formats in 1970.

In the metric system, a common, daily use format is centered on the A4 size sheet which have dimensions of  210 x 297 mm.

The equivalent common format under the American system is the Letter format of  8 ½ “ x  11 “ ( 216 x 279mm). This is illustrated in Fig #1.

The US Letter format’s differences compared to an ISO A4 sheet are;

Width is greater by ………      2.85 %  or 6mm

Height is shorter by ………     6.06 %  or 18mm

Sheet area is smaller by ….      3.49 %  or 2,106 sq.mm

In TP our web presses are optimized for a 210mm x 275mm format known as Quarto, which is a popular American format for magazines.

Newsmagazines like TIME and NEWSWEEK have adopted another format with dimensions of 203mm x 267mm . This also happens to be  the original US Letter format approved in the 1920’s as a US government document standard until it was changed to 216mm x 279mm in the early 1980’s .

This difference in paper size formats between North America and the rest of the metric world create document incompatibility problems, for example , when a US format page file is output as an ISO A4 page , all the page settings will be scrambled and the document may have to be re-formatted again.

Other problems encountered will be when filing ISO format documents in US format folders and binders and during photocopying when scaling a page. An ISO page will fit nicely with balanced, equidistant  margins while a US  format page may have uneven white spaces on margins .