Newspaper Formats

[sandyRoe]

I asked a friend to bring me back a couple of newspapers after a  visit to the US.

Both were rectangular with their width about half their depth.

Tabloids here are also rectangular but closer to square shaped.

How did different formats develop?

[brainiac]

Although not a Guardian reader, I rather liked the recent 'Berliner' size it had - a sort of hybrid of broadsheet and tabloid.  Named after the German newspaper, I thought it elegant and easy to handle.

One of the drawbacks was that the G2 section ( with features, reviews, TV listings etc) was half the size of the main paper, so very small, and was memorably described by the editor of a rival newspaper as 'looking like something you'd see hanging by a piece of string in the outside lavatory in the Australian outback.'