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A standard format for sheets used in commerce and desktop publishing is the ISO A4 paper size. The ISO, or International Standard Organization format, is comprised of three basic series entitled A, B, and C. For its versatile uses and maintaining a professional international business image, the scales and shape defined by this system are beneficial. This is also a convenient format for use in determining postal rates.
Until the ISO series were created, there were no standards for formats used in publishing for documents including letters, posters and catalogs. Although ideas about page composition go back hundreds of years, many different sizes and shapes were in use. This theory was first seriously considered by a German philosopher named Lichtenberg in 1786, and was put into practice in the 1920s.
This convention has come into use in the majority of countries in the world. By the year 1975, it had become so common that the International Standards Organization established this as the internationally accepted format. The exceptions are the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines, where the letter format (8.5 x 11) is used.
The name given to this standard, based on the metric system, is ISO 216. The basis for the standard is the sheets aspect ratio, or proportion, which is based on the square root of 2. This is a ratio that can be expressed as 1:1.4142. The base size of paper is called AO, which equals one square meter and has the dimensions 841 by 1,189 millimeters.
There are two related scales, B, which is also part of the ISO 216 standard, and C, referred to as ISO 269. All three series are related as a geometric progression, in other words, they are proportionate to each other on a scale of 2 1/8 as measured by the lengths of their sides. B sizes are used for paper sheets whose proportions equate in scale to those of A as geometric means, meaning that a C0 is halfway between an A0 and a B0. The C series are generally used for envelope dimensions.
The unique quality of this square root of 2 proportion is that, when folded parallel to the short side into halves, the same shape is reproduced. Letter format sheets do not result in the same proportion when folded in a similar manner. When copying or scaling documents, for instance, two facing pages of a book or correspondence, the benefit of this shape is obvious, as they reduce to an exact fit.
Besides being convenient for scaling purposes, sheets of this proportion are used for paper folding, like origami, where they may be referred to as A4 rectangles. They are also called silver rectangles, because this shape that remains the same however many times it is folded or trimmed in half is called the silver ratio.
A useful property of the A0 sheet, and of the A4 paper size, is that, because the base size equals one square meter, it is an easy matter to compute weights and masses of bulk quantities. Since the standard weight of a square meter of paper is a known constant, and the smaller sizes derived from it are fractions of the whole, weights and masses are arrived at by simple arithmetic, much easier than letter format.
Until the ISO series were created, there were no standards for formats used in publishing for documents including letters, posters and catalogs. Although ideas about page composition go back hundreds of years, many different sizes and shapes were in use. This theory was first seriously considered by a German philosopher named Lichtenberg in 1786, and was put into practice in the 1920s.
This convention has come into use in the majority of countries in the world. By the year 1975, it had become so common that the International Standards Organization established this as the internationally accepted format. The exceptions are the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines, where the letter format (8.5 x 11) is used.
The name given to this standard, based on the metric system, is ISO 216. The basis for the standard is the sheets aspect ratio, or proportion, which is based on the square root of 2. This is a ratio that can be expressed as 1:1.4142. The base size of paper is called AO, which equals one square meter and has the dimensions 841 by 1,189 millimeters.
There are two related scales, B, which is also part of the ISO 216 standard, and C, referred to as ISO 269. All three series are related as a geometric progression, in other words, they are proportionate to each other on a scale of 2 1/8 as measured by the lengths of their sides. B sizes are used for paper sheets whose proportions equate in scale to those of A as geometric means, meaning that a C0 is halfway between an A0 and a B0. The C series are generally used for envelope dimensions.
The unique quality of this square root of 2 proportion is that, when folded parallel to the short side into halves, the same shape is reproduced. Letter format sheets do not result in the same proportion when folded in a similar manner. When copying or scaling documents, for instance, two facing pages of a book or correspondence, the benefit of this shape is obvious, as they reduce to an exact fit.
Besides being convenient for scaling purposes, sheets of this proportion are used for paper folding, like origami, where they may be referred to as A4 rectangles. They are also called silver rectangles, because this shape that remains the same however many times it is folded or trimmed in half is called the silver ratio.
A useful property of the A0 sheet, and of the A4 paper size, is that, because the base size equals one square meter, it is an easy matter to compute weights and masses of bulk quantities. Since the standard weight of a square meter of paper is a known constant, and the smaller sizes derived from it are fractions of the whole, weights and masses are arrived at by simple arithmetic, much easier than letter format.
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