Comment by valgaze
3 years ago
Allegedly during Colin Powell’ time at the State Department there was quite an ordeal to change paper sizes for communication between offices: https://www.govexec.com/magazine/2001/06/the-powell-leadersh...
“correspondence between headquarters and overseas embassies, known as Diplomatic Notes, for years had to be accompanied by a legal-size (8 1/2-inch by 14-inch) cover sheet. That wasn't really a big deal when the notes were drafted on typewriters. But Ted Strickler, head of State's Office of Foreign Missions, found that since the introduction of the desktop computer, his employees were spending a lot of extra time formatting the notes and fiddling with the paper in the printer. He checked to see whether he could use standard 8 1/2-inch by 11-inch paper for the Diplomatic Notes, instead. He was told to submit a formal action memorandum suggesting the change. Strickler submitted the suggestion to his superiors in January 1999. A year went by. He found out his action memorandum had been lost, so he resubmitted it. In early 2001-two years after he recommended the change in the first place-the department approved the use of standard paper. "If anything so innocuous as changing the size of the paper for Diplomatic Notes was so exceedingly difficult, how difficult would it be to make more important changes?" Strickler says.“
8.5”x11” is a standard size for the US and Canada, but not for the rest of the world. Which leads to the eternal problems for any NGOs or contractors working for the US government overseas who have to source Letter size for US gov partners and A4 for local partners!
Yep. Every time I have to renew my Australian passport I have to buy a ream of A4 paper. Every time I forget where last time's ream was stored. I suspect someday I'll find thousands of sheets somewhere lost in my basement.
Deep within your subconscious memories is a series of you unloading A4 from your printer, thinking about where to best store it, finding 20 reams already there, stacking this one on top, and then promptly forgetting the location.
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I went the other way with it. Bought a ream of A4 and I use it for everything. I hope it causes chaos.
The trick is, next time you need it, make note of where you first look for it, and when your acquire more, put the newly acquired paper on the first spot you looked for the old stuff.
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Just buy a printer with two paper trays and reserve one for A4 paper. Problem solved!
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Why doesn't renewing it online work? is there still a paper based component to it? I don't think I had that problem last time I renewed mine online.
Sounds like a PC LOAD LETTER issue.
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In the Philippines, it is even worse. At least four standards (A4, Letter, Legal, and Long Bond), and all of them are necessary for communication with various government agencies such as BIR.
I did not even know anything else than A4 existed, I just learned that now
Oh, come on. Everyone knows about A3 and A5.
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Why would anyone care if they received the other paper size? The differences are tiny.
Never underestimate the pettiness of a bureaucracy
Asetter us a bit wider it might not fit in a folder properly and when stacked with other A4 forms it won't match, which can be a flying also it probably is processed by a machine where it might not fit. (Say a scan er which extracts the signature to print onto the passport)
Does it really matter? Letter size is close enough to A4 that I doubt anyone but paper nerds would notice
For sending official paperwork to a judge or a visa or something like that, there are a lot of rules. Sending A4 instead of Letter will make them reject your paperwork on the spot.
Someone told me a horror story about a PhD thesis rejected because it has wrong margins (probably something about the margins of the document and additional margins added by the driver). He has to reprint all the copies. Most universities are not so stupid, but if your university is stupid enough, remember to triple check the margins.
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Filing systems, automatic paper handling systems built for A4 won't process US legal. Passport forms include machine read sections such as signature, as do tax returns.
It won't fit in binders, envelope, storage boxes or tab folders.
It's asking for trouble, rejection is likely.
Powell began his term in January of 2001. It isn't clear how "early" in 2001 this change was made, but it seems to have been in process well before the Powell term as SoS and only completed shortly after he took office.
And still not even A4
A/B/C paper series formats are based on metrics system and therefore, morally evil and unfit for the US consumption.
In case anyone is unaware, A0 is 1m^2 in size, and each adjacent number is half the size (i.e. A1 = 500 000 mm^2, A2 = 250 000 mm^2, A3 = 125 000 mm^2, A4 = 62 500 mm^2).
This has the great advantage of allowing documents to be easily up and down-scaled on a photocopier - i.e. an A3 document can be printed at 50% scale on an A4 sheet.
I wonder if anyone ever tried to do something similar with imperial units (AKA English units to the US Americans) - i.e. create sheets of papers with side-length of sqrt(2) : 1, and the largest being 1 square yard or similar.
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> metric [...] morally evil
I've never heard an American complain that Coca Cola is sold by the liter. There's no moral component to Americans not wanting to switch to metric. It's simply a matter of the switch and retooling being more hassle than continuing to use American customary units. Frankly, the difference seems to bother Europeans a lot more than it bothers Americans.
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The US military is no stranger to the metric system, it's the standard.
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* Imperial units are defined in terms of metric units.
* The cost of changing over is astronomical
* Domains where the metric system is actually better use the metric system
* Domains where it does not don't need it.
* You have a supercomputer on your wrist. Dividing by a number other than 10 is not such a challenge anymore.
* A4 paper is in no way superior to letter. It's just a choice.
Replacing American exceptionalism with European exceptionalism (usually because of someone's trip when they were in college) is not necessarily always an improvement.
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> "If anything so innocuous as changing the size of the paper for Diplomatic Notes was so exceedingly difficult, how difficult would it be to make more important changes?" Strickler says.
How difficult was it to change the size? Getting the official requirement changed was difficult; what would have happened if he hadn't bothered and had just started sending everything on normal paper?
US Government Letter Paper is 8x10.5 inches, though I think it's used only for internal documents. Probably too much inertia to try to change it to 8.5x11.
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No wonder State Department is called Foggy Bottom (I know the real reason) but it lives up to its name.