How Can Changing a Font Save the Government $400 Million?

[Greg Bernhardt]

Change Font Typeface and Save $400 Million - 14 Year Old Tells Government How to Save Money. An e. You can write it with one fluid swoop of a pen or one tap of the keyboard. The most commonly used letter in the English dictionary. Simple, right?

Now imagine it printed out millions of times on thousands of forms and documents. Then think of how much ink would be needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NriCQwUd8hE

 

[zoobyshoe]

14 is the new 35.

 

[micromass]

Even better: just remove the "e". You can read fine without it anyway. And it will save even more money! Where's my Nobel prize?

 

[SteamKing]

There's a lot of nonsense the govt.'s involved in which could be eliminated entirely. Out of a $3+ trillion annual budget, $400 million isn't even a rounding error.

 

[micromass]

Even better: just remove the "e". You can read fine without it anyway. And it will save even more money! Where's my Nobel prize?

And why not just remove all the vowels? It won't decrease readability much!

 

[Ben Niehoff]

vn bttr: just rmov th "". You can rad fin without it anyway. And it will sav vn mor mony! Whr's my Nobl priz?

Fixed that for you.

 

[dlgoff]

Even better: just remove the "e". You can read fine without it anyway. And it will save even more money! Where's my Nobel prize?

Pay reasonable attention to written English communication standards. This includes the use of proper grammatical structure, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. SMS messaging shorthand ("text-message-speak"), such as using "u" for "you", and "please" for "please", is not acceptable.

Ban micromass.

Never mind. I can't even spell correctly.

 

[micromass]

Ban micromass.

Never mind. I can't even spell correctly.

Just trying to save money

 

[Enigman]

Even better: just remove the "e". You can read fine without it anyway. And it will save even more money! Where's my Nobel prize?

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*Mr.E puts micromass in the ignore list*


P.S. And not one joke about the euler's number? I am officially ashamed for y'all.[/size]

 

[leroyjenkens]

Or they could, like, you know, stop printing so much stuff?

 

[JorisL]

Or they could, like, you know, stop printing so much stuff?

Legal documents have to be printed, long reports are easier to read on paper* and so on.
Probably some unnecessary printing happens daily by all those employees (what was it 72/day/employee?). So there can be saved some money there.

It's nice that he made a (somewhat?) quantitative analysis about this stuff. Who knows what he comes up with in a few years.

* No offense but please don't tell me anything about reading reports on screen since that doesn't work for most people especially longer documents. Neither do e-readers work well for me. What they could do is print 2 pages/side. I do that all the time to keep my printing expenses to a minimum.

 

[Curious3141]

Even better: just remove the "e". You can read fine without it anyway. And it will save even more money! Where's my Nobel prize?

I disagr vhmntly with you.

 

[Curious3141]

And why not just remove all the vowels? It won't decrease readability much!

Dsgr vn mr wth y.

S y vwl?

F s, dsgr vn mr vhmntl wth.

 

[micromass]

Dsgr vn mr wth y.

S y vwl?

F s, dsgr vn mr vhmntl wth.

Teenagers have no problem reading this while texting, so I don't see the problem.

 

[edward]

That reminds me my printer is sending an "out of ink" signal to my computer. It starts blinking about fifty two pages before it is actually "out of ink".

A little pop up tells me that running out of ink can damage my printer. It even offers a way to order ink immediately by clicking HERE.

I have always thought of the "out of ink" warning as a sales promotion.

Could this be an intentional premature extrapolation of how much ink is really left in the cartridges?

 

[micromass]

That reminds me my printer is sending an "out of ink" signal to my computer. It starts blinking about fifty two pages before it is actually "out of ink".

A little pop up tells me that running out of ink can damage my printer. It even offers a way to order ink immediately by clicking HERE.

I have always thought of the "out of ink" warning as a sales promotion.

Could this be an intentional premature extrapolation of how much ink is really left in the cartridges?

The worst thing is that if you keep printing, then your warranty expires...

 

[Curious3141]

Teenagers have no problem reading this while texting, so I don't see the problem.

I'm no teen. Not even at heart. OK, I'm a 5 year old at heart, but no teen.

 

[edward]

14 is the new 35.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. It is caused by our diet.

 

[Hornbein]

And why not just remove all the vowels? It won't decrease readability much!

In the old days writing materials were so expensive this was actually done in Arabic (and perhaps still is). Mohammed forbid this practice for writing the Koran, as it introduces ambiguities.

Even more common was writingwithoutspacesbetweenthewords, which is still done in some countries. I even saw an English sign written this way in Laos. It is hell when trying to learn a language from writing.

 

[Borek]

Writing without vowels is nothing new. Actually before Greek Alphabet vowels were never marked at all.

 

[Evo]

If the OP wasn't an April fools joke, I'd have suggested to just print in "economy" mode.

 

[Lumberjack400]

https://imgur.com/gallery/CcqON

 

[FlexGunship]

I happen to have worked in the printing business as an engineer for the last seven years (both offset and digital).

There are four fundamental problems with the proposed solution:

1. Most actual printing within the US government is done with offset. The economy of scale and pricing of ink is wildly different. Entire catalogs can be printed for pennies using lithographic offset technology. The presupposition that everyone is using "HP ink #27" and paying Staples' prices is wrong.
2. Most printing inside the US government (via the GPO) is defined by media contract (media is the material you're printing on). It doesn't matter how much ink is laid down (solid black or a single period) it only matters how many are produced. (True, you can still reduce the amount of ink used, but it won't alter the actual cost to taxpayers.)
3. Compare a 12pt Garamond next to a 12pt Arial. The font typeface itself is smaller. You would reap similar benefits from switching to 11pt Arial.
4. I'm criticizing a 14 year old.

EDIT: It would be wonderful for this to be true. It's a great feel-good story. But there's nothing really here of any merit.

 

[zoobyshoe]

[*]Most printing inside the US government (via the GPO) is defined by media contract (media is the material you're printing on).

I'm having trouble understanding the wording of this. What does it mean for printing to be "defined by media contract?" I mean, if I want a definition of "printing", I'd check a dictionary.

 

[Travis_King]

I believe Flex means that they charge you per sheet of "X" type of paper (and probably whether it's color or B&W), not broken out into "$a for paper, $b for ink, $c for machine time...". If you print 100,000 sheets of full text at 10 pt font, you'll pay the same price as 100,000 pages of a single period on each page. At least, that's the point as Flex put it forward.

 

[micromass]

Wait, this isn't an april fools?

 

[D H]

I'm criticizing a 14 year old.

That's a real problem! While other 14 year olds are posting "I got blasted this weekend and did <deleted>", this kid tried to do some real research and solve a real problem.

On the other hand, his research is more than a bit flawed. The GPO spent $750,000 in 2013 on ink. Getting from that number to $400 million is a bit of a stretch.