| ▲ | Modified3019 4 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
We (normal citizens, businesses, government) mostly use “Letter” size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_(paper_size) which is slightly shorter than A4 Apparently the reagan admin is responsible for making this our official government document size, and no one knows exactly why this size was chosen. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | 13hours 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Like most of your standards. No-one knows why, but it's obviously advantageous to defend it religiously as "better than everyone else" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | SllX 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That Wikipedia article was lacking citations so I dug some up with ChatGPT: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CPUB-101spub9/pdf/GP... On page 52 (57 of the PDF), there’s a letter dated December 18th 1978 (Carter administration, not Reagan) from the Congressional Joint Committee on Printing adopting 8.5”x11”, effective January 1st 1980 so departments & agencies could use up their 8.5”x10.5” stock. I also found this article from Time from January 15th 1979 that this was actually slightly cheaper despite using more paper: https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0%2C33009%2... The government adopted 8.5”x10.5” to save money back in 1921 vs what was already the industry standard of 8.5”x11”, but this ended up backfiring and a General Services Administration report in 1972 recommended switching to 8.5”x11” would reduce by 5% the amount of times a secretary would need a second page. The Joint Committee of Printing estimated this change would save several million dollars. > On hearing the news, one straight-faced bureaucrat in the Government Printing Office said of his colleagues' reaction to the news: "Some people think that this issue has been inadequately studied." Apparently the American Forest & Paper Association is under the impression that it was the Reagan administration’s proclamation: > Oddly enough, the United States used two different sizes - the 8" x 10.5" and the 8.5" x 11". Separate committees came up with separate standards, the 8" x 10.5" for the government and the 8.5" x 11" for the rest of us. Once these committees found out about each other a couple years later, they agreed to disagree until the early 1980's when Reagan finally proclaimed that the 8.5" x 11" was the official standard sized paper. https://web.archive.org/web/20120220192919/http://www.afandp... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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