We in the USA love our 8 1/2" x 11" paper. It fits so nicely into those happy little envelopes, which themselves are exhilarating to sort, smiling as you see a letter from your long-lost friend or cringing as you see your electric bill.
The Europeans (and the rest of the world) like their A4 paper. It's slightly narrower and slightly longer than our dear American letter standard. It looks like that awkward child in middle school with a super-long and lanky body.
Putting it in an envelope is much easier, though. Most people simply fold it in half instead of that awkward tri-fold. I always fail at that. There is always that one side that is shorter than the other, or I fold along an angle and it just looks awful. Folding in half and sticking in an envelope is just so much easier.
It's also much easier to copy out of books. Apparently, most book publishers use A4 as their standard size. If I lay a book open on the copy machine, I don't have to work some magic with the zoom function in order to get the right side of the page. It's always nice to actually know what those phantom letters actually are.
But it's still awkward and cumbersome. The paper folds over as you hold it up to read it. It's structurally less sound.
Plus, hole punches here only give two holes, and they're close to the center of the binding. Putting papers in a binder now lends them to tri-folding (which is funny, because envelopes require a bi-fold.)
So next time you print out a fresh sheet of paper, take a moment to pause and ponder the wonderfully divine proportions of our 8 1/2" by 11." Its divine proportions should make you glad.
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