Main Rulebook vs Little Black books

[Lord High Munchkin]

And yes, the U.S. is still firmly entrenched in the old British system

Heck, even the British aren't using such backward paper sizes—we have completely gone over to the International Standard.

If I was a US book author, I'd demand to be upgraded.

 

[BP]

Are you seriously suggesting that "foreign nationals" (from one country, whatever that may be) are somehow involved in a conspiracy to render America's educational system ineffective?

It's nothing to do with anybody else. Blame your teaching system, blame your schools, blame the apathy of people in those schools, but blaming "foreign nationals" for it is completely preposterous.

Ha Ha! Got ya! I knew somebody would jump on that - but if you read carefully I explicitly stated '... propogated by our pre-college schools...'

I'm pointing out that our system is so pathetic we don't even control the content! Which might be a good thing considering the pathetic state of our system - excepting the bad use of English and non-English names used in examples (supposedly for cultural diversity).

No - if you saw our textbooks I am sure you would be appalled. The highschool (14 - 18 year olds) textbooks look like comic books. The math books come in 'state specific editions'.

Of course, the textbooks are not the only problem. (At one point, I even heard a state education agency publicly complaining they couldn't pay enough to attract foreign nationals to teach English...) The underlying problems stem from a system that counts on popular elections without qualifications - both in education and broader contexts.

[P.S. - nationalities are just artificial boundaries to me - I just hate to see people chained to ignorance - whatever the reasons.]

But - sorta veering back on topic - all the textbooks I've seen of late come in non-'English' sizes


Lord High Munchkin -
based on my experience with commercial printers in the U.S. - internal units used for stock are almost exclusively in S.I. (we refer to it by the French abbreviation), but we still use ANSI-A (letter) for a lot of printing. Probably due in large part to government forms (i.e. taxes) being officially Letter sized (a Reagan legacy if I recall).

The worst part (to me) is that half a sheet of Letter does not share the same ratio (width to length) as a Letter sized sheet. Whereas A5 is not only 1/2 an A4 sheet - but they share the same aspect ratio (square root of 2, I believe).

My U.S. printed Pocket Rulebook has really large top and bottom margins (good for notes - but odd looking) - with A5 being slightly shorter and slightly wider - I suspect it looks better balanced when printed in other countries.