Comment by klondike_
3 years ago
Does it really matter? Letter size is close enough to A4 that I doubt anyone but paper nerds would notice
3 years ago
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.
In the 80s at UIC, there was famously a woman in the graduate school who checked measurements of all margins and other spacing with a ruler and rejected dissertations which didn’t meet the strict requirements.
In the early 2000s there was a person at Indiana U who also did this. You had to get any dissertation approved by her before printing. And there was a ruler. Are PDFs accepted for dissertations yet?
2 replies →
> Sending A4 instead of Letter will make them reject your paperwork on the spot.
This generally happens not because anyone actually cares about the paper size, but because some employee has a target to 'process 5 applications per day, and then you can go home.' If an application is made on the wrong size paper, thats an insta-deny, and the employee just saved themselves an hour!
It's more about making nice folders where all the sheets hace the same size, and be able to make holes in the same spot in all of them. The employee has to be there 8 hours per day, even if there in no application to process.
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.