US Letter

8.5 x 11 in CMYK 1.29:1 portrait

An 8.5 by 11 in sheet. The default page size in the United States and Canada, and what every office printer in those countries feeds first.

about the size of a sheet of office paper

About this size

US Letter exists because the United States skipped ISO 216. Where the rest of the world standardised on a mathematically elegant series that halves cleanly, North America kept a slightly wider, slightly shorter sheet whose proportions trace back to colonial printer conventions. The two systems are close enough to be confusable and different enough that documents formatted for one rarely print cleanly on the other.

Letter is the right choice when the audience is American or Canadian and the document will live on screen as much as on paper: worksheets, flyers, handouts, contracts, anything that gets emailed and occasionally printed. For international audiences, A4 is the safer default. For documents that must work in both regions, the cleanest answer is to provide both, because scaling Letter content onto A4 (or the reverse) almost always cuts off a header, a footer, or a paragraph.

Worksheets
Flyers
Printable art

Pro tips

1 Keep margins generous unless the job is going to a print shop. Most home and office printers cannot lay ink to the edge of the page, and pushing critical content into that band gets it cropped.
2 For finished raster artwork, 300 DPI is the safe default. For text-heavy documents that will ship as PDF, vector type holds up at any resolution.
3 Leave room near the binding edge for binders, hole punches, and stapled classroom packets. 0.75 in on the long edge handles most cases.
4 If the audience reaches outside North America, ship an A4 version alongside. Letter scaled to A4 loses a line or two off the bottom; the reverse hides a strip off the top.

Common mistakes

Sharing a Letter PDF with an A4 audience without testing the print output. The default scaling crops content and the recipient often does not notice until they have already printed.
Using web-resolution artwork inside a print document and assuming it will sharpen at the press. It will not. Source raster assets at 300 DPI or use vector.
Forgetting the unprintable border. Roughly 0.2 in around the perimeter is dead space on most home printers, and any layout that ignores it ends up looking off-centre on print.

Frequently asked

What is US Letter in pixels?

2550 by 3300 at 300 DPI. 1275 by 1650 at 150 DPI. 612 by 792 at 72 DPI.

Should I use Letter or A4?

Letter for North American audiences. A4 for international. For documents that will live in both, ship both PDFs and avoid the page-break drift entirely.

Why does my Letter document print differently in Europe?

Because most European printers default to A4, which is taller and narrower. The PDF either scales down (and gets smaller margins) or prints as-is (and gets cropped along the edge).