Paper sizes

 

 

"Why don't you people use normal paper when you submit a work?" It was a "Meet the Agents" workshop run by the Geneva Writers Group. It was a New York literary agent talking to anglophone writers who live in Europe.

We quickly told her that most of the world used A4 as a standard size not 8 1/2x11. I'm not sure she believed us.

The first time I ran across the A4 was when a French friend was writing me regularly on what I thought was an oversized paper.

The second time was when I started a job in Switzerland and I realized that all the paper there was oversized and everyone was talking about A4. I couldn't find any 8 1/2 legal. That I used the word oversized meant I was coming out of the American bubble and thought our way was the way the world did things.

Later I realized I could set my word processing for either. My publisher, however, was the one who did the change.

I have worked for two standards writing organizations, the National Fire Protection Association and the International Electrotechnical Commission, a sister organization to ISO, the International Standards Organization.

It would be nice if paper could be standardized but it probably won't happen any more than we will have standardized electric plugs.