Quirery
In the preceding post I refer to a quire of papers. To save you the effort of looking that up, I'll tell you that it's a twentieth of a ream of paper. And, what's a ream. Well, it's a tenth of a bale of paper. OK, already, for those of you into numbers and units of measure.
A ream of paper was originally 480 sheets of paper. That would be forty dozen sheets, twenty quire of 24 sheets, or a tenth of a bale of 4800 sheets. Perfect!
But, printers have selvage and a ream of paper was increased to 516 sheets. That would be forty-three dozen sheets, twenty quire of 25.8 sheets, or a tenth of a bail of 5160 sheets. Too bad about the quire.
But things got worse. A ream is now set at five hundred sheets. Unfortunately, that leaves a ream at 41.66 dozen sheets, twenty quire of 21.8 sheets and a bail at 5000 sheets.
So it is that when you press the Easy! button at Staples you will buy either a bail (5000 sheets) or a ream (500 sheets) of printer paper for your computer. You will also be buying either 200 or 20 quire, now defined as either 24 or 25 sheets.
But, please, just don't ask the clerk for 10 quire of paper.
Did I ever tell you that shoe sizes are measured in units of barleycorn?
A ream of paper was originally 480 sheets of paper. That would be forty dozen sheets, twenty quire of 24 sheets, or a tenth of a bale of 4800 sheets. Perfect!
But, printers have selvage and a ream of paper was increased to 516 sheets. That would be forty-three dozen sheets, twenty quire of 25.8 sheets, or a tenth of a bail of 5160 sheets. Too bad about the quire.
But things got worse. A ream is now set at five hundred sheets. Unfortunately, that leaves a ream at 41.66 dozen sheets, twenty quire of 21.8 sheets and a bail at 5000 sheets.
So it is that when you press the Easy! button at Staples you will buy either a bail (5000 sheets) or a ream (500 sheets) of printer paper for your computer. You will also be buying either 200 or 20 quire, now defined as either 24 or 25 sheets.
But, please, just don't ask the clerk for 10 quire of paper.
Did I ever tell you that shoe sizes are measured in units of barleycorn?
I wonder what the etymologies are of all these paper related terms.
ReplyDeleteQuire comes to us from the Anglo-French "queir" which, when first used in 1225, meant "set of four folded pages for a book" .
ReplyDeleteReam comes to us from Arabic "rizma" through Spanish "resma" and Old French "reyme". For the Moors who brought the manufacture of cotton paper to Spain, it meant "bundle" from the veerb "rasama" which meant "collect into a bundle".
Bale comes to us from Old French "bale" and in 1325 was first to mean "large bundle or package".
Thanks for the enlightenment!
ReplyDelete