An Extra: Saving Money Printing

My children always entered elementary grades, science fairs, and each year I was impressed by some of the entries. I also gagged upon seeing “The Volcano” repeats. I have to say, our children's entries were different and interesting. Mom has a Ph.D., RN and dad has a BS in Natural Science among others.

Our oldest son has a real thirst for knowledge and love for science. One year he did a library research project to prove the existence of dragons. Pretty convincing. One of the judges said that was not a science project. She hid in a corner after mom and dad educated her about scientific investigations. The next year he did a project to correlate the temperature of ocean water with salinity. The judge chastised him for presenting a project his parents did for him and picked a volcano as best project. She's lucky to have continued teaching. A professor at the Scripp's Research Institute at Torey Pines, CA. asked to see the paper and pointed out some errors, but was overall impressed by what an eleven-year-old would try.

This year, our daughter's second-grade son did his first project, comparing the electrical voltage output of a lemon and orange with practical applications.

I ramble about this because our family is not out there alone. Fourteen-year-old Suvir Mirchandani who attends a Pittsburgh-area middle school embarked on a 6^th grade science fair project to help his school district save money. What he ended up doing was showing how the US Government could save up to $400,000,000 a year.

Suvir's project focused on printing. As he showed, a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume costs $38 per ounce. An equivalent amount of HP printer ink costs $75. By focusing on type faces and the amount of ink each letter requires to print, he determined that by using Garamond type face his school (and the US Goverment) could reduce ink consumption by 24%. Considering how much Uncle pumps out, that translate into a significant savings.

What does that mean to writers? First of all, Garamond is an excepted font to use when submitting manuscripts and that could save $$ printing them out. For publishers, that is also a significant savings per book. However, do not expect to see that translate into increased royalty payments when you have your manuscript published unless you use this information when dealing with the printer.

You can read Suvir's study and report on CNN News: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/student-money-saving-typeface-garamond-schools/index.html.