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International standard paper sizes
by Markus Kuhn
Standard paper sizes like ISO A4 are widely used all over the world today. This text explains the ISO 216 paper size system and the ideas behind its design.
The ISO paper size concept
In the ISO paper size system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of two (1.4142 : 1). In other words, the width and the height of a page relate to each other like the side and the diagonal of a square. This aspect ratio is especially convenient for a paper size. If you put two such pages next to each other, or equivalently cut one parallel to its shorter side into two equal pieces, then the resulting page will have again the same width/height ratio.
