alt-text
It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).
Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:
The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram
[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]
ISO 216 A series papers formats
AO
A1
A3
A5
A7
A6
Et.
A4
Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.
Aside from the 1 to √2 ratio, the area of A0 paper is exactly 1m². People behind ISO 216 thought of everyting.
Which is awesome, because every number up halves the size. This, combined with the standard way that paper weights are given (e g. 80g/m2) allows you to easily calculate how much a piece of paper weights: 1 A4 80g/m2 weighs 5g (1/2^4 * 80g)
People behind ISO 216 thought of everyting
how to make a good standard:
step 1: copy from DIN
Well, Germans are pretty anal about standards (thankfully) and they do them right, so why not copy them?
From their website: “We’re ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. We develop and publish International Standards.”
Sadly, ISO in recent decade started to do bullshit. They don’t pay for standard development, they don’t employ anyone for standard development, they collect membership fees from national standards organizations, require payment to download most standards and don’t allow to copy published standards. Also they retroactively paywalled a lot of standards.
Wait, the US genuinely doesn’t use A4 etc.?
We have trouble fitting all our freedom on your kooky, internationally-recognized sizes
Here’s a comparison using the most sensible units possible:
Ngl as a Canadian, I implicitly thought 8.5x11 was A4. Well that’s dumb, we should switch.
Letter paper (8.5" x 11" | 215.9mm x 279.4mm) is kinda sorta pretty close to A4 (8.27" x 11.69" | 210mm x 297mm) so without having the two next to each other, it can seem like A4 is just a funny piece of letter, and vice versa. But to answer the actual question, USA and Canada (and apparently the phillipines???) use the “North American Standard” which is a terrifying mess in comparison to the beauty that is the ISO standard.
Edit: typos
The US is a former British colony, but it doesn’t stop them from doing whatever the hell they want. Utter lunatics…
I’m sorry, I still haven’t forgiven them for the whole tea thing…
Tbf, I can see the use case for some “non-standard” sizes, like Legal, where having more height to the page without the extra width might be useful for readability of long documents.
…can’t think of an excuse for the rest, though.
That’s how it starts, you see the usefulness of one case, the next thing you know is you’re measuring distance in sheep and power in mice
As a European, I do appreciate Legal as a format.
It just happens slightly too often that an A4 is not long enough and the last bit, including the signature, goes to the next page.
I wish Legal was common here. Or perhaps we could get a Long A4 with a third extra height or so.
The Letter format should just be replaced by A4 though.
Their hole puncher has three holes and binders/folders have 3 rings as well
How many have yours got? More or fewer?
I have seen legal/letter sized clipboard with two rings, for the short end of the paper.
Either two or four. The two holes are kinda in the middle then if it’s four holes it’s those same two plus two more closer to the edge
No, we mostly use Letter, Legal, etc. When you use photoshop to print, you would pick letter or legal usually.
https://goodcalculators.com/paper-size-conversion-calculator/
11x17 is incredibly common too. Usually it is oriented landscape and z folded to get a large diagram into a document. It’s kind of irritating that the most typical large format size is 24x36, which is a different aspect ratio than 11x17, for a variety of reasons. If you’re designing something you need to know what aspect ratio to design for. Most copiers can do 11x17, and if the standard large format size was 22x34 it would be exceedingly easy for most offices to produce good working copies of large documents. Best compromise I’ve seen is when people put a logo or header on the side that can be omitted when you switch aspect ratios.
Wait a second if the bank app can’t transfer money how do they do it? Just barter with guns? Are the bullets like coins?
We involve third parties to help spy on our transactions.
It’s OK, they charge us for the privilege.
Wtf?
Also are banks just dumb or what? Has it crossed their greedy minds that they also can charge to make transfers?
What’s pictured there is when people use Venmo to pay for something instead of just transferring money between friends. The fee is paid by the seller. Banks already do this for traditional sellers in the US which is why you’ll see signs asking for cash instead of cards.
And tax evasion. But I don’t care as long as the tamales are good.
We have a fee-free bank-to-bank transfer system that is based on pre-digital technology that takes 2-3 business days. We often call it “direct deposit” or automated clearing house (ACH). It’s often used for payroll and paying bills.
Now, we could probably make this payment system instantaneous relatively effortlessly (and thus useful for regular in-store purchases), but the banks lobby against this so they can continue to charge us fees and interest to over-use credit cards. (Interestingly enough, credit and debit cards all use direct deposit on the backend to actual transfer funds between parties).
This is all fine and dandy for most people because they simply can’t imagine doing things a more consumer-friendly way.
We have a fee-free bank-to-bank transfer system that is based on pre-digital technology that takes 2-3 business days. We often call it “direct deposit” or automated clearing house (ACH).
Ah, right, kinda like SEPA Credit Transfer. You do need a persons IBAN which is a bit long, but their name is validated so you usually send it to the right person.
Now, we could probably make this payment system instantaneous relatively effortlessly
Ooh, cool, kinda like SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, which transfers money within ten seconds to bank accounts using the above mentioned number.
This is all fine and dandy for most people because they simply can’t imagine doing things a more consumer-friendly way
And that’s why, in the Netherlands, Tikkie took the country by storm. It is an app that allows you to use iDEAL (a web-based payment system, soon rolled out in Germany and Belgium as Vero) to send money to friends. Usually takes one pin and three taps to send it, and have it instantly appear on the account of the recipient.
Venmo, Zelle, Cash app, etc.
My last 3 banks all had ACH transfers in-app, too, so idk what they’re smoking
3 days? UK here, the other day I transferred money to my wife (different bank) while she was handing her card to the cashier at the supermarket. It took about 1 second.
Surely there’s some challenger bank letting you do modern stuff?
I assume it’s ACH, I’m at work and my job includes doing ACH work so that just kinda typed out.
It has me put their routing and account number in, then took anywhere from 5 minutes to a day to clear, p sure that’s ACH
i just assumed people used 3rd party services for ease of use or faster transactions, seems so wild that you’d not be able to send money using your bank to me
here it takes 1-2 business day for a free wire transfer from one bank account to another, and you can do it in your banking app or on the bank’s website. you just need to authenticate with your online pin code. you can also pay 1€ to get a <24h transfer
it’s honestly much better than using a third party service, since pretty much everyone has a bank account, and pays using a card tied to that account directly
Brasil enters the chat
No fees transfer takes seconds, as long as it’s not international. People use it for buying groceries, clothes or paying for whatever they buy in the middle of the street from other people who are not businesses. Confirmation of payment from receivers end is immediate with a push on your phone.
All sellers can produce a QR code including receiver address and price to be payed. All bank apps scan and pay seamlessly.
Russia enters the chat.
Same. It is done with National Payment System of Cards law, which people usually call “MIR cards”. It started as replacement system for visa and mastercard, but evolved into System of Fast Payments/Transactions.
You can use it in three ways: enter recepient’s card number, enter recepient’s phone number or use qr code.
In Canada we have Interact e-Transfer. Basically all the banks colluded to make a system that allows for instant money transfer between banks using email or phone number as the recipient identifier, along with options for comments and security questions.
I felt like this was a huge step up compared to all the hoops and third party apps I had to use in Europe.
Idk what all this talk is about - we have wire transfers in the US. I don’t need a third party to do it either, it’s exactly as you’ve described, I can do one through the bank’s app or on their website, and it’s free. It’s not as common though since the information required is: Name of the recipient’s account exactly as it is, account #, routing #, and exact name of the bank tied to the routing #. You can save that info though to make it easier to transfer the next time around - it’s very useful for close family and friends.
EDIT: Turns out I have two different ways of transferring money. One is just moving money between accounts, can be at the same or a different financial institution, has the same functionality as a wire transfer, is free, and doesn’t rely on third party apps. A wire transfer is apparently done via some federal system and does require paying $20 or so, but I haven’t had to do a wire transfer in forever. I’m not sure why anyone would want to do a wire transfer.
and it’s free
This is very uncommon in the US. Most major banks (I’m not aware of any exceptions) charge a fee for each outgoing wire transfer, usually $25-$30. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, and PNC for just a few examples I’m aware of, plus every credit union that has local branches in my area. Some of those banks even add a second fee at the recipient’s side for incoming wire transfer.
They often encourage customers to rely on third party services like Zelle instead for small transfers to friends and family. Many banks’ sites/apps can also handle transfers between two accounts that both belong to the same bank for free too.
Isn’t sepa the eu system?
Sorry but bank transfers are not 1st world exclusive, it’s common place in 3rd world as well.
fun fact: the length to width ratio of ISO 216, √2:1, is the same ratio as the tritone in an equal tempered 12-tone musical scale. If you fold A4 paper in half, you get a piece of paper with the same length to width ratio as before; analogously, if you invert a tritone, you get another tritone.
idk why the image says “european”, the standard is worldwide. only north america and parts of latin america don’t use it afaik.
