Difference between 11x17 and tabloid

This has probably been answered before, but after some extensive searching I couldn't really get a straight answer.

I do a lot of printing at work and also converting documents to PDFs, and among all the options on my printer properties, I always see 11x17 and tabloid. It seems they both do the exact thing when printing: the outcome is 11x17. I'm not sure if there's any difference either when converting to a PDF (the only thing I could think of is maybe there's a resolution difference between 11x17 and tabloid PDF pages).

So is there a difference? If so, what are they. If not, why are both options available?

Thanks to anyone who can help! Sorry if this is in the wrong forum topic.

 

Hi, I believe that 11x17 is a Tabloid, 12x18 is a Tabloid Extra

 

Wikipedia actually has a really good explanation here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size
It explains how a lot of the history is lost, but basically the terminology is regional; there is no difference in size between tabloid and 11 x 17

 

I'm glad this came up. Sometimes when I print to pdf and choose 11x17 landscape, the result comes up as portrait. I can't remember in which program, but for some reason when I chose tabloid the resulting pdf was the correct rotation, but I now think this was only a fluke as I can't find any documentation that 11x17 and tabloid are different rotations portrait to landscape dimension.