Quote:
Originally Posted by Solitaire1
Why did 8.5 inch by 11 inch paper become the standard size for typing paper? It seems an odd size that is larger than necessary since most letters don't need that much space. Besides, most books are not that size and it seems that each page contains plenty of space for the text. Then again, books contain a large number of pages while letters are usually only a few pages.
|
I think it might be that in the old days when paper had a good rag content that the pages were sized that way. And there is the fact that the early printing press was adapted from a press used to do things like pressing olives and grapes so the table surface was a set size. And remember early printed books were printed to look like they had been hand written and the old hand written books were fairly large probably for ease of writing as it's very hard to write verysmall for a long period of time. Those are just guesses on my part though.