A8 Paper Size

The A8 size is the third smaller A size. Its dimensions are 74 x 52 mm or 2.91 x 2.05 inches.

This is one of the most popular formats for creating and printing business cards. It is not suitable for uses involving human writing, and is then most often used in professional printing.

Its total area is indeed only 0.0038 m² (0.04 square foot or 6.2 square inches). Its printing surface, that is to say, after removing usual margins, is further limited.

A8 size was standardized at the same time as all other A formats, that is to say for the first time in Germany in 1922. It was then suggested by Walter Portsmann that length / width had to respect √2 ratio, or width x length = √2 (√2 = 1.4142 (a / b = 2b / a = √ 2)). DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung, German Institute for Standards) applied it to A0 to A10 sizes as DIN 476. The latter was taken over by the international standard ISO 216 in 1975.

An A8 sheet is 2 A9 sheets, or 4 A10 sheets for inferior sizes, but also ½ an A7 or ¼ an A6 sheet for larger sizes. The proportion between these formats is always maintained, so that the content of the page does not change during a change of format (printing or copying). If you fold an A8 in its width, you get an A9, and an A8 sheet is obtained by folding a format A7 in its width.

Knowing that A8 size is 256 times smaller than A0, whose size is 1 m², we can obtain the weight of a sheet A8 dividing paper weight by 256. For example, for a paper of 120 g/m², a sheet of A0 weighs 120 grams, and a sheet A8 weighs 120/256 = 0.47 grams.