What Is 11×17 Called on a Printer: Paper Size Names Explained?

An 11×17 sheet is called Tabloid in portrait orientation, Ledger in landscape, and ANSI B in the ANSI/ASME Y14.1 standard.

A print job stalls on one detail: the dropdown lists no 11×17, only names you don’t recognize. The sheet measures 11.00 × 17.00 inches, or 279.4 × 431.8 millimeters, and every one of those names points to the same physical paper. The label shifts with orientation, printer driver wording, and which standard the manufacturer follows — not with the size itself.

The Three Names For One Sheet

Tabloid, Ledger, and ANSI B all describe the identical 11×17-inch sheet, so choosing any of them in a print dialog produces the same output.

The distinction is convention, not measurement. Ricoh’s glossary defines 11×17 as a US/ANSI size used for drawings, diagrams, spreadsheets, presentations, and posters. Prepressure notes that naming splits along orientation: Tabloid describes 11×17 portrait, Ledger describes 17×11 landscape, while other references use the two interchangeably. Your printer driver picks its preferred term from the rotation you selected.

ANSI B comes from the ANSI/ASME Y14.1 standard, which assigns letters to North American sheet sizes. That is why office equipment and CAD software often label the size ANSI B instead of Tabloid — same dimensions, standards-body label.

Why Your Printer Might Not Offer It

An 11×17 option appears only when the printer and its driver handle wide-format media; a standard letter-only machine will never list it, no matter which name you search for.

• Tray limits: confirm the physical tray accepts 11×17 and holds enough sheets for the batch.
• Driver support: the size list comes from the driver. If it’s absent, the hardware class likely tops out at letter or legal.
• Media setting mismatch: choosing a different size than what’s loaded triggers a feed error or an automatic scale-down.

If you are shopping for a machine that actually handles this sheet, our tested roundup of the best 11×17 printers for home offices covers which models feed it reliably.

Setting It Up Correctly

Matching the document size to the print-dialog paper size prevents the unexpected resizing that trips up most people.

1. Set the document or PDF page size to 11 × 17 inches.
2. In the print dialog, pick Tabloid, Ledger, or ANSI B that matches your orientation.
3. Turn off Fit to page unless you want the content scaled.

Prepressure’s guidance is blunt on this point: if the document is already formatted for 11×17, leaving “fit to page” active can shrink or stretch content unpredictably. Set both sides to the same size and let the printer do nothing extra.

Three Mix-ups Worth Avoiding

Most 11×17 confusion traces to three specific errors, and each one is easy to sidestep once you know the cause.

• Name vs. orientation: the sheet size never changes, but the menu label does when you rotate the page. Tabloid portrait and Ledger landscape are the same paper turned 90 degrees.
• ANSI B vs. ISO B: these are unrelated. The international B series follows ISO 216 and is a different measurement entirely — do not substitute one for the other.
• Fit-to-page overreach: a document already sized for 11×17 does not need scaling, and forcing it can wreck margins and layouts.

HP’s store filters tabloid as its own paper category, which confirms how manufacturers treat the term as a product class rather than a brand. HP’s tabloid printer listing groups machines by that exact paper size.