Loose-Leaf Paper
“Why 8 ½ × 11 inch, college ruled, loose-leaf paper, Mr. Girard? I can’t sleep at night. You’re awful, awful, awful!”
That’s all right. I can take it. I know my dogs and cat and turtle love me. But what about that paper? Well dig this, although 8 ½ × 11 inch paper had a storied history (polyptoton) and place in the West, in 1921 then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover turned heads by approving 8 × 10 ½ inch paper as the official standard for government letterheads. Now, remember, that it was the villain Hoover, later as President, who led us into the Great Depression; you’ll recall, those of you that were around, the rallying opposition cry against him as the Depression set in: “In Hoover we trusted, now we’re busted.” It all started with the paper.
The dizzying, maddening confusion over paper sizes in America lasted for sixty years until President Reagan heroically set things aright during his administration in the 1980s by declaring 8 ½ × 11 inch paper the true standard of this shining city on the hill.
And so there you have it, the story of 8 ½ × 11 inch paper. My preference and request for it I’ve explained before―spacious and roomy for your writing, practical for my organizing―but now you can also see that 8 × 10 ½ inch paper is simply aberrant.
Read more about paper and other school supplies at the Christian Science Monitor’s piece “Hey kid―what’s in your locker?”.
Score it!
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4 Responses to “Loose-Leaf Paper”
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While I am not trying to argue for 8 × 10 ½ paper, I have some issue with your argument for 8 ½ × 11 inch paper. To me it does not seem that the paper choices of a good or bad president has any thing to with our own classroom chioces. While it is an interesting peice of trivia, it seems irrelevant. And as for the changing of governments letterheads to 8 ½ × 11 inch being “heroic”, I would have to say that is a poor use of hyperbole. The article was clearly bias agianst Hoover and anything that had to do with him, even his paper.
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Oh snap!
It’s going down.
That’s right, Clay. You been served, and it’s on!