ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Pa. teen says typeface change could save millions of dollars

PITTSBURGH

A teenager has published a study suggesting the federal government could save millions of dollars a year in printing costs by switching to a thinner typeface that uses less ink.

Suvir Mirchandani, 14, said he noticed there was plenty of talk at school about saving paper and he wondered about saving ink.

Suvir, who lives in the Township of O’Hara, just outside Pittsburgh, said recently that the idea began when he was in middle school and he “noticed that some teachers used heavier fonts” for printing. He said he already was interested in graphic design and used a software program to estimate how much ink different typefaces, or fonts, used.

“The data was really surprising to me,” he said of how the differences added up, even for the printing done by his school district.

He expanded the study to look at potential savings by the federal government, and a new paper on his research was published in March in the Journal of Emerging Investigators, a peer-reviewed journal created for promising middle- and high-school students. He found that the Office of Management and Budget already had estimated that federal agencies would spend about $1.8 billion in printing for this year and that ink was more expensive than paper on a per-page basis.

In the new paper, “A Simple Printing Solution to Aid Deficit Reduction,” Suvir analyzed five documents produced by five U.S. government agencies and estimated how much ink would be used with three typefaces: Garamond, Times New Roman and Century Gothic. The analysis estimated that using 12-point Garamond would save about 29 percent in ink costs.

Suvir said his school district looked at the idea but hasn’t been able to implement the switch. Still, he’s happy that his work succeeded in “even just creating an awareness” of how much ink different typefaces use.

The Government Printing Office has praised Suvir’s work and said it will review the printing suggestion.

Stinking mink carcasses gone

BROOKINGS, Ore.

A half ton of stinking mink carcasses spilled into the boat basin at the Port of Brookings Harbor on the Southern Oregon Coast.

Port manager Ted Fitzgerald said Thursday they got it all cleaned up, but the smell was so bad it was tough to get near the port.

Fitzgerald says crab fishermen have their own secret ingredients for bait, and mink carcasses are one of them.

He says one fisherman was taking his leftovers out to sea to dump Wednesday when some of the load spilled in the boat basin, and the port had to clean it up.

State police spokesman Lt. Gregg Hastings says they are investigating whether any laws were broken.

Associated Press