What Size Paper Is 8.5 X 11

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A lot of people simply think about newspaper when the part printer is out, or "The Office" is on TV. But listener Steve McGillivary in Fountain Hills, Arizona, is a graphic designer; he's had to be aware of newspaper sizes.

While a lot of people who piece of work in an office will know that the printer takes 8.v 10 11 inch paper, at that place'south also often a ream of 8.5 ten 14 inch newspaper lying around, merely to confuse matters.

McGillivary wants to know why we ended up with those two sizes. To him, they seem arbitrary. Even people who piece of work with paper on a daily basis accept the format of alphabetic character paper for granted.

"That's just how it is; it'due south just 8.5 10 eleven inches," said Corey Iavarone, a retail operations manager with Paperworks, adding that he'd like to know the genesis of the size, likewise.

The answer lies in the history of papermaking, co-ordinate to the American Forest and Newspaper Clan.

Early paper makers dipped wooden framed screens, or molds, of diverse sizes into vats of water and pulp. These "vat men" would then heave them back out — all past paw — and one time they'd left them to dry, they'd cease up with two big sheets of paper.

"1 of the mutual sizes that came nigh, according to manufacture sociology, was a size that was about 44 inches wide," said Marker Pitts, the association's executive director of printing-writing, pulp and tissue.

Cut that 44 inches in half, twice, and yous cease up with paper 11 inches long.

An early paper mold, showing the watermark, and copper plates on the side where the wood had started to wear from use. (Courtesy Georgia Tech Institute Communications)

Some of the original papermaking molds live on at the Robert C Williams Museum of Papermaking at Georgia Institute of Applied science in Atlanta. They carry evidence of the papermaker's outstretched grip in the form of wear on the wooden sides, which are frequently reinforced with copper.

"Y'all can just imagine thirty or 40 years of somebody using the same tool everyday, and how information technology's really formed to fit their hands past that point," said Virginia Howell, museum director.

As offices became increasingly mechanized with the introduction of the typewriter, photocopier and printer, the need for paper at a fixed size grew, and eight.five ten eleven inches became standard "letter" paper.

At that place'southward a second part to McGillivary's question, though. Why do we also accept "legal" paper that is 3 inches longer? The answer to that question seems lost in the history of papermaking.

Some experts think information technology was originally used by lawyers, who needed extra space for long, wordy contracts. These days, law firms have settled on standard letter size, though, according to paper seller Iavarone. He has a very different buyer of legal paper.

"Restaurants cannot purchase enough of viii.five x fourteen paper," he said. "That is who that market is for correct now."

Restaurants similar the extra length to showcase their menus, and legal paper is cheap enough to replace every 24-hour interval if a menu changes or needs replacing. Folded in half, legal paper makes a perfect cocktail menu, and in one-half again, it's merely right for daily specials.

Modern uses for these ancient paper sizes mean they're likely to be with us for the foreseeable future.

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