[Tex/LaTex] Default paper size is A4 instead of US letter

articlepaper-sizetexlive

Quoted from https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Page_Layout#Page_size:

It will not have been immediately obvious – because it doesn't really cause any serious problems – that the default page size for all standard document classes is US letter.

I created a simple document like this:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Lorem
\end{document}

After I compile this into PDF with TeX Live, I always get A4 size output.

$ pdflatex foo.tex
$ identify -verbose foo.pdf | grep Print
  Print size: 8.26389x11.6944

I can reproduce this on Ubuntu and Mac. Is the Wikibooks wrong in this case? Does the output size default depend on the Tex Live defaults?

Best Answer

By default TeX Live is installed with A4 paper chosen by default.

If your environment requires US Letter paper, just run

tlmgr paper letter

with the appropriate privileges.

On macOS, you can use TeX Live Utility (provided you installed TeX Live as MacTeX): menu Configure > Change Paper Size…

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