my scantily printed A4 page

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???