Units of paper quantity size and type of paper being sold. Reams of 500 sheets (20 quires of 25 sheets) were known in England in c1594; in 1706 a ream was defined as 20 quires, either 24 or 25 sheets to the quire. In 18th- and 19th-century Europe, the size of the ream varied widely. In Lombardy a ream of music paper was 450 or 480 sheets; in Britain, Holland and Germany a ream of 480 sheets was common; in the Veneto it was more frequently 500. Some paper manufacturers counted 546 sheets (21 quires of 26 sheets). J.S. Bach's manuscript paper at Weimar
Units of paper quantity the good quires ("insides"). These outside quires were known as "cassie quires" (from Fr. "cassée", "broken"), or "cording quires" and had only 20 sheets to the quire. The printer William Caslon in a book published in 1770 mentions both 24- and 25-sheet quires; he also details printer's wastage, and the sorting and recycling of damaged "cassie" quires. An 1826 French manual on typography complained that cording quires (usually containing some salvageable paper) from the Netherlands barely contained a single good sheet. It also became the name for any booklet small enough to be made from a single quire of paper.