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From the article:

> US Letter: 216 mm x 279 mm

> A4: 210 mm × 297 mm

so it's 18mm longer while being 6mm narrower. At that small a difference, I would assume that a preference of one over the other is similar to that of metric vs. imperial - the one you were raised on just seems right.

Which one did you grow up with?




But it is both 18mm and 6mm narrower, so it goes from 1.414 to 1.29 in terms of ratio.

In other words A4 seems 10% narrower in terms of shape, which isn't insignificant.

Having said that, I'd rather keep A4 given the useful properties described in the article.


I grew up with the A sizes of paper and agree with the parent comment. When I moved to the US I was pleasantly surprised by the size/shape of US Letter sized paper.


That's a 9.5% difference in the aspect ratio. I don't think that's small.


For what it's worth: I am a European, still living in Europe and surrounded by A4 and I envy American's US Letter format.

I almost always have the feeling that A4 is too big.


It's just that you can resize everything while still keeping the same portions with the A* paper while with the US formats you just have to redesign everything.




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