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Comment by mark-r | Hacker News Reader

This is a very thorough explanation of what I consider a brilliant paper size standard. What genius to make the aspect ratio identical for each size, and to create smaller variants by cutting the larger one exactly in half.

There are two places where you can tell it's a bit dated though. The first is in declaring the TV aspect ratio as 4:3; it's just about universally 16:9 now. The second is the expectation that the U.S. would be converting to metric, that becomes less likely with every passing year.

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The brilliance becomes obvious when you combine it with the envelope sizes. Mailing things in the US always ends with you having to awkwardly tri-fold papers and hope that you didn't botch it, so that the result will fit in your envelope of a non-standard size.

Meanwhile, anyone can fold an A4 perfectly in half and it will always fit perfectly in a C5 envelope. Paper can't be folded? Mail it in a C4 envelope instead. Think a C5 is too big? Get a C6 envelope and fold it twice.

All the parts fit perfectly into each other, and it's obvious how they fit. Any size paper can be mailed in any size envelope simply by folding it.

Right, it’s a great system! Concerning envelopes, here in Germany most mail I get is in DL envelopes, which also require the double fold. C5 is mostly used if double folding doesn’t work due to thickness.

> Mailing things in the US always ends with you having to awkwardly tri-fold papers and hope that you didn't botch it, so that the result will fit in your envelope of a non-standard size.

Just use the envelope to measure where to fold.

I live in Japan and the vast majority of mail is folded in thirds, just like it is in the US... Is using envelopes for paper folded just in half actually widespread in other countries?

After a vacation in, then, Czechoslovakia I received a letter from the police. The letter was artfully folded so that the text would overlap at 90 degrees (if viewed with a light source behind the folded letter). I always reckoned that was done to scramble the letter from unintended reading.

Normally the C3 or C4 envelopes used by government would be printed on the inside with a mass of letters, but in a way that matched with how the letter paper inside would be folded.

In Denmark you can get the envelopes that will fit an A4 folded in half easily, but I’ve see full A4 envelopes and those which require four foldes more often.

But postal mail is almost a thing of the past. I think the last two “letters” I recieved was a new credit card and the keycard with one-time code for my government issued digital login.

Same in France.

The vast majority of envelopes are the long ones where you have to fold three times and you never get it right (but are hzppy if it still fits into the enveloppe)

C5 is very common in the UK, but Germany also mostly sends in thirds (DL).

Yes. They are the ones buying the C-series envelopes.

Well, at least there is a limit to the folding. Good luck folding it a seventh time :)

I knew someone would point out that you can't fit an A0 paper in a C7 envelope. :-P

> The second is the expectation that the U.S. would be converting to metric, that becomes less likely with every passing year

Luckily, most countries in the world are not the US.

Not so lucky if you happen to live there as many of us do.

It doesn’t seem reasonable to blame most of the planet when one country fail to comply with international standards.

I didn't think I was blaming anybody for anything. I was just admitting to be one of the unlucky ones.

That’s cool, sorry about that.

I'd argue that the International Standard Paper Sizes system is a case where a clever idea has been promoted beyond what is beneficial. There are a lot of use cases where the standard sizes are not optimal. I personally find the US Letter size handier than the A4, and 3x5 inch is vastly more convenient than A6 for index cards and pocket memo books. In Japan, most "B5" notebooks I see are actually considerably off standard in the measurements.

Japan's "B5" originated from the official paper size in Edo-Tokugawa era. So it has quite a bit of history, and IMO it's handier than ISO papers.

A fun fact is that "letter" size is pretty much hated in Asian countries. Since many poorly-internationalized softwares choose "letter" as the default printing size, while its usage is virtually zero there.

Yet in Japan there is a crazy number of different paper size and color, especially all the various slips used for bills and by the administration. The "post card bill" is also particularly annoying since once opened they don’t get flat again.

"Letter" size is only used in the USA, Canada and (sometimes) Mexico.

It's not just east Asia that can be annoyed by American defaults, but the whole world.

It is also used in Guatemala,El Salvador,Honduras,Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

It gets interesting when we start mixing imperial,metric and colonial measures.

I agree that the slightly wider and shorter page of the US Letter format seems more convenient in practice.

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