The Paper Quire, Ream and Bale
A counting system built around how many sheets a printer would spoil.
Origin
Medieval in origin, from the manuscript trade, and carried into printing and the stationery trade unchanged.
The catch
The traditional ream was 480 sheets, but a printer’s ream was 516. The extra thirty-six were outside sheets, expected to be damaged in handling, so the printer got a usable 480 after spoilage. The unit had waste built into it.
The word quire descends from the Latin quaternio, a gathering of four folded sheets, which is how a manuscript was assembled before it was bound. Modern printing settled on a ream of 500 for convenience, so the traditional 480 now survives mainly in the fine art and specialist paper trades. The spoilage allowance disappeared with mechanised handling.