When it comes to paper sizes, tabloid paper is probably the largest you will ever see regularly. It’s not usually used for printing official documents or school reports, but it’s a paper size that’s worth knowing, especially if you’re in marketing. So, how large is tabloid paper?
Tabloid paper measures 17 inches wide and 11 inches long. However, if you flip it 90 degrees, it instantly becomes ledger paper. Tabloid paper is used for all sorts of things, including brochures and flyers.
In this guide, I’ll explain what tabloid paper is most commonly used for, as well as how it differs from other paper sizes.
What Is Tabloid Paper?
Tabloid paper is a type of printing paper. It’s much larger than other types that we use in businesses and in schools, and as such, it doesn’t have very many uses in everyday life. However, if you’re in marketing, you should definitely utilize the extra-large surface area of tabloid paper to get your name out there.
This type of paper measures 17 inches wide and 11 inches long. It has a total surface area of 187 square inches, which allows you to large text and imagery to the sheet of paper to describe your brand or an upcoming event.
Despite being much larger than letter and legal paper, regular printers can be used to print on 17 × 11-inch sheets of paper, provided you flip it 90 degrees first. If you want to print in landscape mode on tabloid paper, you will have to rotate the contents 90 degrees before hitting CTRL+P. Otherwise, you will need to get a specialized printer that fits tabloid paper.
What Is Ledger Paper?
Speaking of rotating tabloid paper 90 degrees, do you know it’s called when a sheet of paper measures 11 inches wide and 17 inches long? Ledger paper.
Similar to how rotating letter paper will instantly turn it into “wide letter paper,” doing the same thing to tabloid paper will immediately change its type. Ledger paper is mainly used in businesses for bookkeeping, as well as printing legal documents like deeds and wills.
How Does Tabloid Paper Differ from Other Paper Sizes?
This whole time, I’ve spoken about how tabloid paper is larger than other paper sizes. But how much larger is it? The following table will give you a pretty good idea of how it compares to letter, legal, executive, and a few A-series sizes.
Paper Size | Width | Length | Surface Area | Difference |
Tabloid | 17 in. | 11 in. | 187 sq. in. | — |
Letter | 8.5 in. | 11 in. | 93.5 sq. in. | 100% |
Legal | 8.5 in. | 14 in. | 119 sq. in. | 57% |
Executive | 7 in. | 10.5 in. | 73.5 sq. in. | 154% |
A1 | 23.4 | 33.1 | 774.54 sq. in. | 76% |
A2 | 16.5 in. | 23.4 in. | 386.1 sq. in. | 52% |
A3 | 11.7 in. | 16.5 in. | 193.05 sq. in. | 3% |
A4 | 8.5 in. | 11.7 in. | 99.45 sq. in. | 88% |
From the table above, it’s clear that tabloid is much larger than letter (100%), legal (57%), and A4 (88%) paper sizes, which are the most commonly used printing paper sizes in the world. From the A-series, A3 paper (11.7 × 16.5 inches) is the most similar to tabloid/ledger sheets since they only have a surface area difference of about 3%.
Do I Need Tabloid Paper?
Whether you need tabloid paper or not is entirely up to you. All I can tell you for certain is that tabloid paper is mainly used for marketing purposes, such as printing flyers and single, double, and triple-fold brochures.
Now, if you flip tabloid on its side and orient it so it’s longer in length than in width, then your company will undoubtedly have a reason to use it. Since ledger paper is used for bookkeeping purposes, hence the name, accountants will use it for keeping track of the financial health of their organization.
Weight of Tabloid Paper
Because tabloid paper is larger than letter, legal, and executive sheets of paper, it should weigh more, right? Well, assuming all 4 paper size grades have an identical bond or GSM (gram per square meter) ratings, then yes, this is true. However, this isn’t the case.
Letter, legal, and executive sheets of paper usually have a GSM rating of around 80. This means that when aligning the sheets of paper to form a perfectly square meter without overlap, the collective weight of the sheets is 80 grams. This isn’t the case for tabloid paper.
For the most part, tabloid paper has a GSM of around 220, making it nearly 3 times heavier than traditional printing paper. In addition, it’s thicker and less bendy.
So, if we take Rite in the Rain’s weatherproof tabloid paper, which weighs 13.8 pounds for a 500-sheet ream, that means the weight of a single sheet of tabloid paper would be 0.0276 pounds, 0.4416 ounces, or 12.519 grams.
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