Figure: The inch as a natural unit as shown by an cartoon alien

Caption: The Alien demonstrating that the inch is the natural unit for the North American standard sheet of paper: the US Letter sheet of paper is 11 × 8.5 inches . Yours truly should hold up a sheet of paper.

The inch is the natural unit for the US Letter sheet since that sheet has exact dimensions in inches and the inch is about the right size for measurements and designing on US Letter sheets. Yours truly has always found the centimeter too small for convenience for US Letter sheets.

By the by, by modern definition, 1 inch = 2.540 centimeters exactly. Also, by the by, in typography, the natural unit is the point (pt) = 1/72 inches for historical reasons. However, the point is sufficiently small that typography never has to use fractional point and in that sense it is a natural unit.

Credit/Permission: © David Jeffery, 2003 / Own work.
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