this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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I was hoping that there was a metric baseline for this paper size, but it still bugs me that the dimensions aren't "even". 297mm? That's no better than 8 1/2 inches.
There is also B4, which is 353 x 250 mm. Not perfect, but you can more easily see how they got 250, as B0 is 1414 x 1000 mm.
There is, but A4 isn't the baseline, A0 is.
A0 is 1m² with a ratio of 1:√2. Cut that in half along the larger side and you have A1, half it again and you have A2, etc. on down the line.
The entire series maintains the same exact ratio down to A13 at 9mmx13mm.
So ridiculously dedicated to metric that they didn't think to make A0 an exponent of 2, and then designed an entire system around dividing it by 2.
A0 should've been 1.024 meters.
You’d still get «weird» lengths in the other dimension, though. Remember, the aspect ratio has to be 1 to the root of 2 for the folding in half to work.
Also, I don’t think 1024 would have been such an obvious number back in the late 1700’s, when this system was first thought up 😅
There is a system of sizes where the shortest side of the base size is exactly 1 meter, though: the B system. The aspect ratio is the same as for the A sizes.
1 is an even power of two. 1 = 2^0^
It's based on the 1m² A0, fold it in half to get A1 and so on.
The proportions stays the same too
I see what you’re saying, but the «weird» dimensions are what makes the whole thing with folding in half to get the next size work:
The aspect ratio has to be 1 to the root of 2 for it to work, and that’s going to make some dimensions «uneven». The utility of that system is worth it many times over!