my scantily printed A4 page

does this sound too weird?
or can i use it?

suggestions for alternatives?

I think it sounds cute and sexy, as in "scantily clad".

But perhaps you mean "my sparsely printed A4 page" ?

What are you trying to convey by this phrase? That you have a thin resume? This is my guess, but only a guess.

I do know that A4 is a common international size of paper; it's worth noting, however, that "A4" will mean nothing whatsoever to many Americans who haven't lived abroad. (As with most measurements, Americans go their own way; ordinary American paper is called "letter-size" (8.5 in × 11 in = 215.9 mm × 279.4 mm.))

That you have a thin resume?

oh thanks for jumping to conclusions! :o ;)

how about brits, do they use A4? i don't mind if americans don't get me, i write british mathildic as far as i can.

i have only ever seen scantily followed by clad or more rarely by dressed, but the dictionary seems to allow to use it like above.

i am talking about a vocabulary list printed out from the internet by the way.

Edited by: mathilda

Hi Mathilda Yes, Brits use A4 paper and the rest of the range C5 envelopes etc.

Cannot suggest an alternative which fits what you mean, scantily does sound a little peculiar though.

Merry Christmas by the way.

Are you trying to say that there just isn't much text on the page or that the printing is faint, to the point that at some places it's impossible or almost impossible to see. "Scantily printed" implies the latter to me. I wouldn't use it if you mean the former.

With lots of space between the lines, right?

Hmmm. Sorry for jumping to the wrong conclusion...but I genuinely couldn't imagine what you mean. And I still can't. Neither "scantily" nor "sparsely" are words that I would ever apply to a piece of paper, so I can't imagine what said paper would look like.

(And the fact is, as you've already pointed out, "scantily" is one of those English words used almost always in collocation: scantily clad, scantily clothed, scantily dressed. It's actually difficult to find examples on the web of the word used in any other context.)

"Sparsely printed" gets 220 Google hits, and it looks like it is used for what you want. 220 hits is not a lot, but then "pages with small amounts of text on them" is not something that needs to be referred to very often.

Speaking of American ignorance about A4 pages, I wonder how much of the world knows about "8 1/2 x 11". (And do Americans even realize how barbaric and unwieldy the name is compared to the simple international format names?)

#10 -- I guess by unwieldy you mean long. But "8 1/2 by 11" has the advantage of actually describing the size. At some point you have to learn how big an A4 piece of paper is. Not so with "*8 1/2 by 11." I suppose we could also call a "two by four" a "three" or a "C" and save a couple of syllables. And instead of saying a "twenty-gigabyte hard drive" we could say "a J hard drive." But one's mind would get cluttered.

{quote:title=Kerouac2 wrote:}{quote}
Speaking of American ignorance about A4 pages, I wonder how much of the world knows about "8 1/2 x 11". (And do Americans even realize how barbaric and unwieldy the name is compared to the simple international format names?)

Actually, as I mentioned, colloquially the paper is usually called "letter" or "letter size"...hardly a tongue-twister.

Most will find it perverse that the U.S. maintains these different paper sizes, just as we're diehards for the Fahrenheit scale and cling to our gallons of gas and ounces of steak, etc. (Even after many years abroad, I still can't ever remember my height in centimeters or my weight in kilograms). Personally, I like it that the U.S. goes its own way in measurement. Inconvenient on occasion, perhaps, but a small blow against total worldwide homogeneity.

I've fulminated here in the past about the use of inconsistent units in international contexts, so I won't repeat myself, but even I as a fan of the international standard system of units find different paper sizes quite harmless. It's quite unlikely that a satellite will miss its orbit, or a bridge will collapse due to a difference in paper size used by different teams.

You could use sparse, meagre, or scanty.

I would say my meagre list.

#12 -- I still remember my height in centimetres but I couldn't tell you my weight in kilos. My height hasn't changed.

:(

If you think the different paper size is harmless, try photocopying a 150 page document in A4 size at Kinko's in the US. The paper will jam so many times that they will put a full time assistant with you to get the machine going again 10 or 15 times.

my weight in kilos: 61kg
my height in centimetres 166cm

no idea what that is in pounds ... 120pounds?
or in feet...5"6' or something???