A thing of beauty

One of my work colleagues has just given me the best present I’ve ever received at work.

I took a picture of it.

Yes it’s paper but it is so much more than that, it’s proper paper; perfect in size and form and unknown on this continent.

This is A4 paper.

This is the standard to which paper is held in the rest of the civilized world. You can read about the sheer mathematical beauty of this size of paper here 

For some reason North America decided to thumb their nose at reason and logic and adopt a series of paper sizes baffling to anyone from the rest of the planet.

They use sizes such as Letter, legal , tabloid, diplodicus (I may have made that last one up).

The names tell you NOTHING about the size, aspect ratio or anything. They lead to you looking like a dumb foreigner when you stand in the mail room exasperated, asking a bemused audience “Ok, can anyone tell me what size this is please?” whilst brandishing a piece of paper like a weapon.

Letter is cunningly disguised to look almost like proper A4 paper, but just be subtly different enough ( slightly narrower and longer) that when the rest of the world sends you documents on sensibly sized paper, your printer has a fit.

I have been in Canada 7 years and still miss proper paper. So thanks E and B for the gift, now if you could just get the rest of the continent on board, that’d be great.