Chris Myers comments: | Ah, so this is what it has come down to now: US Bashing. | OK, I can take it, but I did caveat my previous posting with the following parenthetical: | | "(I do realize that many of "us" are not in the US, so this may be pure ignorance here as well)." ... | | > So, Guido - why are you compiling with A4 instead of US letter? | > Don't most people print sheet music using standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch | | Typically an American question .... | I'm glad I'm not "most people" ;-)
Actually, if you look at music published in the US, you'll have trouble finding any that is printed on the 8.5x11-inch "letter" size paper. Music is usually printed on larger pages. The most common size is 9x12 inches, but there are many other sizes. It's impossible to make a shelf of printed music look neat and orderly. There is a common conspiracy theory that this done to make it difficult for people to copy the music. But these sizes long predate the advent of copiers, so that theory doesn't really explain the mess. It's really just part of a general contempt in the US for standards of any sort. It's not just American industry. The general population considers the topic of less than zero interest, while the government produces so many "standards" that they can't keep track of them. I read a funny article a few years ago about US government document standards. The writer described finding over 180 different official standard paper sizes for different kinds of documents. And this was just the federal government; each state has its own set of standard paper sizes. Most Americans couldn't give you a coherent definition of the term "standard", although it does have fairly precise legal meaning. The "letter" paper size is called "standard" mostly because the office supply retailers setled on it as the main size that they sell. But this wasn't done under the auspices of any sort of standards agency; it was more of a mob action that finally settled on a direction by milling about without a leader for a century or so. One of my favorite examples is the fact that the Internet is based on standards that were developed mostly by Americans. What are the published Internet standards called? They are called "RFC", which stands for "Request For Comment". In American circles, this is considered a reasonable title for a legal standards document. There was a cute rant floating around a couple of years back, in response to the idea that the Sept 11 attack was led by a bunch of crazies. The gist of it was "You think you're crazy? Let me tell you what crazy is ...", followed by a list of things considered normal by most Americans. It included such things as "We sell hot dogs in packages of 10 and hot dog buns in packages of 8." And the eternal favorite "We drive our cars on parkways and park our cars on driveways." The conclusion was that when it comes to crazy, no mere terrorist can come close to the way that normal Americans organize the things around them. When talking about standards, nobody should ever allow an American to say a word. ;-) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
