LTR paper is short for “Letter” paper and has a dimension of 8.5 x 11 inches.  In many countries including the US, businesses and schools use LTR paper or letter paper in documentation, printing or memos, and note-taking among others.  It is also the most popularly used paper size in the US.  Students and employees of various companies for example are very familiar with the LTR paper size.  When somebody is in need of paper to print a certain memo or articles for example, it is very likely that the paper size to be used is that of LTR or letter paper.

Outside the US, many use another paper size called A4.  When this type of paper size is compared with LTR paper, A4 is longer but not as wide as LTR paper.  A4 is also considered an international standard in terms of paper size.  Some organizations in the US do use A4 size paper, but LTR paper is still the most widely used.  When it comes to filing documents for example, it is always preferred to have only 1 size of paper.  In the case of the US, many documents are filed using LTR paper.

With LTR paper’s popularity as a paper size, many machines such as printers and scanners typically have LTR as the default size.  When LTR is configured as the default paper size, it simply means that the printer manufacturer for example is expecting that many documents will be printed with the use of LTR paper.  When other paper sizes are to be used, people may need to change the settings of the printer in order to come up with the expected printing or output.  Otherwise, if the default printer paper size does not match with the actual paper size used, some parts of the document may not be printed properly or the margins may be compromised.  When this concern happens, the printed document or output may be put to waste and the cycle of printing may need to be reset and done again.