Re. Paper sizes

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

     Kathleen Alt (welcome to the list!) asked a few questions about paper
     size:

     1. There isn't any formal "standard" for computer books. The main
     standards arise from the paper industry's standard paper sizes, which
     are multiples of 8.5X11 inches in North America. (Europe, Oz and Japan
     use somewhat different standards.) There's a really good economic
     reason to adhere to these sizes: anything with a different size will
     require the printer to trim the paper to its final size. This wastes
     paper, thus money. A good non-economic reason is that you may want
     your book to fit tidily on the shelf beside other computer books, in
     which case, the task is to find out what books most of your audience
     uses.

     2. You should also talk to your printer. Everyone seems to have a
     different press, and thus a different maximum paper size. The most
     economical solution is generally to use the largest piece of paper
     your printer's press can handle and then fold this and trim it to
     final size. (Rationale: press time is the most expensive part of
     printing for any job that doesn't use four-color printing, thus, the
     fewer passes through the press, the cheaper the job.)

     3. Always define your page size within the software that will do the
     final printing so that this information travels with the text and
     graphics. You often can't do otherwise anyway; for example, what
     stationary store provides reams of 5X7 inch laser printer paper?
     Another advantage: defining the page size and margins within the
     software lets you generate crop marks (either automatically, in DTP
     software, or by hand, in wordpro software); these help printers line
     up camera-ready copy in front of the camera and trim it to final size.

     Hope this helps. Feel free to drop me a line directly if you need more
     details.

     --Geoff Hart    @8^{)}
     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

     Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
     our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.