Why is American printer paper 8.5″ x 11″? Is this the best size for readers? If so, then why is the standard in Europe A4 which is 8.3″ x 11.7″?

Most of us probably don’t think about the size of a piece of paper – printer paper is one size, while books and magazines come in many different sizes. But the size of the paper has implications for readability, fonts, and the rhetorical decisions we can make about layout and design.

A recent post in The Atlantic summarizes a discussion on TEX, an online community for users of typesetting systems like LaTeX. Paper size is a holdover from typewriters and monospaced fonts – which we just talked about in ENG 282 CUPID Studio.

What size do you think printer paper should be, and why?