International default paper size.

I live in South Korea. Here, the most commonly used paper size is A4. I
can buy A4 easily at the nearest store. I can also buy B5 if I take a
little more effort. But, Letter is almost impossible to buy. If I
really want, I can order Letter online but it's really hard to find an
online site that sells Letter and even if I can, Letter is very
expensive compared to A4.

In Korean version of Windows, the default paper size is set to A4. I
found that in the original English version of Windows, the default size
is Letter. Many softwares created in US have Letter as their default
print size. So how about other countries? What size is your countries'
default paper size? I'm just curious about that. Is A4 used only in
Korea? How about Europe, Japan or Latin America?

On 24 Jan 2007 17:42:27 -0800, "Cat" wrote:

I live in South Korea. Here, the most commonly used paper size is A4. I
can buy A4 easily at the nearest store. I can also buy B5 if I take a
little more effort. But, Letter is almost impossible to buy. If I
really want, I can order Letter online but it's really hard to find an
online site that sells Letter and even if I can, Letter is very
expensive compared to A4.

In Korean version of Windows, the default paper size is set to A4. I
found that in the original English version of Windows, the default size
is Letter. Many softwares created in US have Letter as their default
print size. So how about other countries? What size is your countries'
default paper size? I'm just curious about that. Is A4 used only in
Korea? How about Europe, Japan or Latin America?

I think you will find that A4 is the "international default", and (as in many
things such as weights and measures) the U.S. of A. is close to being the odd
man out.

A4 is a metric-derived size, so when countries progress to metres instead of
"imperial" (sic) distance measurement, A4 follows closely.

In article m,
"Cat" writes:
I live in South Korea. Here, the most commonly used paper size is A4. I
can buy A4 easily at the nearest store. I can also buy B5 if I take a
little more effort. But, Letter is almost impossible to buy. If I
really want, I can order Letter online but it's really hard to find an
online site that sells Letter and even if I can, Letter is very
expensive compared to A4.

In Korean version of Windows, the default paper size is set to A4. I
found that in the original English version of Windows, the default size
is Letter. Many softwares created in US have Letter as their default
print size. So how about other countries? What size is your countries'
default paper size? I'm just curious about that. Is A4 used only in
Korea? How about Europe, Japan or Latin America?

Letter was one of the old imperial paper sizes. I don't
know anywhere other than North America which still uses it.
Rest of the world has been using metric/ISO paper sizes for
many decades.

--
Andrew Gabriel

Only Northern America uses letter size. Out of this region, almost
people use A4.