The German tabloid Bild is to go, um, tabloid.

The German equivalent of Britain’s Sun is actually printed on a large, broadsheet-sized paper, but will test the narrower format used by its British cousins later this year. The move follows the Axel-Springer-Verlag’s trials in Frankfurt and Berlin with a tabloid-sized version of the upmarket weekly Die Welt.

The German publisher’s experiments follow a trend set in the British Isles by the successful move to tabloid-size paper by The Independent, The Irish Independent and The Times, as well as the reported plans by The Guardian to move to the 470�315 mm Berliner paper size (used by its namesake, Le Monde and El Pais) by 2006.