Application
Before the adoption of ISO 216, many different paper formats were used internationally. These formats did not fit into a coherent system and were defined in terms of non-metric units.
The ISO 216 formats are organized around the ratio ; two sheets next to each other together have the same ratio, sideways. In scaled photocopying, for example, two A4 sheets reduced to A5 size fit exactly onto one A4 sheet, and an A4 sheet in magnified size onto an A3 sheet, in each case there is neither waste nor want.
The principal countries not generally using the ISO paper sizes are the United States, Canada and Venezuela, which use the Letter, Legal and Executive system. Although they have also officially adopted the ISO 216 paper format, Colombia, Mexico, The Philippines and Chile also use mostly U.S. paper sizes in ordinary usage.
Rectangular sheets of paper with the ratio are popular in paper folding, where they are sometimes called "A4 rectangles" or "silver rectangles". However, in other contexts, the term "silver rectangle" can also refer to a rectangle in the proportion, known as the silver ratio.
Read more about this topic: ISO 216
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“It would be disingenuous, however, not to point out that some things are considered as morally certain, that is, as having sufficient certainty for application to ordinary life, even though they may be uncertain in relation to the absolute power of God.”
—René Descartes (1596–1650)
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)