"They're not really trustworthy" pretty much shows you right there that the system is screwed up and people have learned to compensate. People who learn the system are so vested in their knowledge, their mastery of something complex, that many refuse to move to an easier system.
80# bond is about as heavy as 110# cover, and 60# cover is about as heavy as as #40 bond. All are in the range of what would be called card stock. But I hope you don't order 40# thinking you'll get card stock, but you end up with slightly thin writing paper because you got index instead of bond. Do we do any other purchasing this overly complex?
It doesn’t say anything about the system, the system is fine. It show the problem with companies. There’s a standard out there, and it’s pretty easy to find enumerated and follow, but these companies decide not to follow it and make up their own definitions for all the standard labels. Which is why the people that use the product have learned to ignore the formerly convenient labels and just pay attention to the stats.
There’s a lot more to the various papers than just heaviness. There’s how well they take what kinds of ink, how well they take a fold.
Oh yeah we’ve got plenty of things out there this complex to purchase. Try hooking a digital modem up to a digital phone line some time. Not only do you have 3 main protocols, you’ve got about a couple of different framings, a handful of codings, 2 different APIs and just to make sure it’s a pain in the but there’s at least 2 and sometimes 3 different names for each one of those things so you’ve got to hope modem company and your telco use the same words, which they won’t, so you better have somebody in house that knows which different things are actually the same things. I’ve made very smart people grab their temples in pain in 5 minutes of discussing telephony, it makes all this other stuff seem pushmower simple.