Half-A4 papersize - folded "the long way"

Question

I'm trying to create a booklet A4 which is folded "the long way", in other words such that the resulting page size is not an A5 page but rather two A6 "on top" of each other.

I changed the paper size successfully by loading the article class with the a4paper option and putting in my preamble

\setlength{\paperwidth}{.5\paperwidth}

However, this of course didn't change any of the lengths controlling text width, margins etc. So I assume there must be another, better way.

How?

Answer 1

You can use the geometry package, or the memoir document class for this. Here's an example with geometry (the kantian stuff is just to provide filler text):

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{kantlipsum}
\usepackage[paperwidth=148mm]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\kant[1-8]
\end{document}

If that looks close to what you need, I suggest then reading the geometry or memoir documentation to make the other adjustments you need (such as tuning the margins).