Grammage

Grammage and basis weight, in the pulp and paper industry, are the area density of a paper product, that is, its mass per unit of area. Two ways of expressing grammage are commonly used:

  • Expressed in grams (g) per square metre (g/m2), regardless of its thickness (caliper).[1] This is the measure used in most parts of the world. It is often notated as gsm on paper product labels and spec sheets.
  • Expressed in terms of the mass per number of sheets of a specific paper size, known as basis weight. The convention used in the United States and a few other countries using US-standard paper sizes is pounds (lb) per a ream of 500 (or in some cases 1000) sheets of a given (raw, still uncut) basis size. Japanese paper is expressed as the weight in kilograms (kg) per 1,000 sheets.
  1. ^ International Standard ISO 536: Paper and board – Determination of grammage. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva.