There is no known reason for the letter size paper format being the size that it is. Most of the world does not use it. Instead, the A4 paper format system, or the ISO 216, is internationally used. The common A4 size is only a little longer and a little thinner than letter paper. It is based off the internationally used metric system, and has a special property wherein an A3 paper is double to surface area of an A4 and so on, and the opposite the other way. Every size in the system maintains the ratio 1:root2. If America changed to the international standard, it would be a great improvement. Doing business with other countries would be easier, and formatting documents with different scales would be simplified. It also would not be very difficult because this paper is produced world wide



