To summarize, Taco kindly solved this problem after exchanging some messages with me off list - thank you Taco. The key is, when using a papersize other than the A4 default with XY, it is necessary to first explicitly set the appropriate papersize. This enables the XY calculations to expand properly. For example: \setuppapersize[letter][letter] \setuppapersize [XY][letter] \setuppaper[nx=3,ny=10,dx=2mm,dy=0mm,topspace=5mm,backspace=5mm] \setuplayout [location=middle] \setuparranging [XY] \showframe \starttext \dorecurse{30}{test} \stoptext This is a very handy way to generate a centered layout for labels of any size. The spacing between the labels is easily controlled with dx and dy. Thanks for the help solving this, Matt