Gywnne Dyer’s Evil Metric

By on May 28, 2011 in Uncategorized

I just figured out this thing that’s been bugging me that no one will care about. When I open Gywnne Dyer’s columns in Microsoft Word, the pages always display side-by-side instead of one at a time. Which I hate. I want Word to display one page at a time.

Dyer’s the only columnist who sends files that do this, and it’s been driving me batshit for months.

What’s the difference between Dyer’s columns and every other file? I couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t margins, it wasn’t a mis-checked option under the View tab, it wasn’t the typeface or font size (although when I display the files at 110 per cent I get the one-page view that I want, but that doesn’t answer the basic question of why it was displaying differently and anyway I oppose such false, lazy “solutions” on principle).

Well, I figured it out. It was the page size. I went to the Page Layout tab, clicked “size”, and aha! Dyers columns are opening in format A4, which is 21 X 29.7 centimetres.

I changed the size to Letter (8.5 X 11 inches) and all is well. Dyer’s pages display one at a time, which is just the way I like to read them.

I feel so much better.

About Stephen Whitworth

Stephen Whitworth is a life-long fan of newspapers and alternative media who got his start in the student press a hundred years ago. He moved to Regina in the fall of 1998 and Prairie Dog recklessly hired him nine months later. It was a terrible mistake and the publication deeply regrets its inability to get rid of him. When Whitworth’s not adding typos to the hard work of Prairie Dog’s many terrific writers, writing hilarious (to him) headlines and finding inventive new ways to make the paper late for its bi-weekly press deadline, he enjoys reading magazines, newspapers and alternative comics, listening to music, playing board games, and drinking and eating. He has a cat and seven six pet snakes (R.I.P., Fred).
View all posts by Stephen Whitworth →

4 Responses to Gywnne Dyer’s Evil Metric

  1. Carle Steel May 30, 2011 at 8:57 am #

    If you’ve never seen it, A4 is very elegant and pleasing to handle. Everything you write looks like literature. Letters get results. Your resume doesn’t look pathetic. I’ve never photocopied with it, but I’m sure it behaves in a much more civilized way.

    (…waiting for Barb Saylor to tell me to move somewhere where they use A4…)

  2. Madeline May 30, 2011 at 9:43 am #

    I’ve always wondered why A4 existed. Thanks for explaining it, Carle. When I submit my manuscripts for publication, I’ll use it.

    But now I wonder whatever happened to A1, A2 and A3. Were they for handwriting, the manual printing press and the gestetner? (Apologies for spelling.)

  3. Carle Steel May 30, 2011 at 9:58 am #

    Ask a silly question:

    “ISO paper sizes are all based on a single aspect ratio of square root of 2, or approximately 1:1.4142. The base A0 size of paper is defined to have an area of one m². With the given aspect ratio of square root of two, this corresponds to a piece of paper which its longer side is one metre multiplied by the square root of the square root (that is, the fourth root) of two and the shorter side being the inverse of this value. Rounded to millimetres the A0 paper size is 841 by 1,189 millimetres (33.1 × 46.8 in).

    Successive paper sizes in the series A1, A2, A3, and so forth, are defined by halving the preceding paper size along the larger dimension. The most frequently used paper size is A4 (210 × 297 mm).”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size

  4. Barb Saylor May 30, 2011 at 11:49 am #

    Sorry to disappoint you, Carle; I just have to say that it’s amazing the things you can learn about because the weather outside is awful.

Leave a Reply