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3. Cigar Size & Ring Gauge

Cigars are expressed in two sizes, length and diameter. While most of the world uses metric units, in America we use inches for the length of the cigar and ring gage for the diameter. Ring gage is expressed in 64th's of an inch. Therefore a ring size of 32 would be a half inch in diameter.

There is no set standard for the names that express various cigar shapes. A Corona might have a length of 5 1/2 inches and a ring size of 42 in one brand, and a length of 5 3/4 inches with a ring size of 44 in another, or anywhere in between.

The following list was adapted from Paul Garmirian's The Gourmet Guide to Cigars as a description of shapes, which are not necessarily found to be true with all cigar brands.