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It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).

Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:

The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram

[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]

ISO 216 A series papers formats

AO

A1

A3

A5

A7

A6

Et.

A4

Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.

Source: Financial Times

  • uis@lemm.ee
    39·
    1 month ago

    Not-super-fun fact: you can measure in metric with school notebook paper.

    Each sqare is 0.5 by 0.5 cm.

    EDIT: 0.5 cm, not mm. For measuring 0.5mm I can use 0.5 mm mechanical pencil lead.

    Also there is coordinate paper:

    0.1 by 0.1 cm. Or 1 mm grid.

    • UntitledQuitting@reddthat.com
      41·
      1 month ago

      I love how that OP’s solution requires an inexact technique to achieve an even less exact measurement. Like Americans really out here being proud of the stupidest shit

    • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      I use it a lot if i need to draw something that is x long. If you do a lot of graphs for example you can use the measurements on your ruler.

      • uis@lemm.ee
        2·
        1 month ago

        Correcting myself: 0.5 cm, not mm.

        For graphs you can use graph paper with 1 mm grid.