Student tells U.S. government it can save $136M by switching computer fonts

According to a sixth-grade student Suvir Mirchandani from Dorseyville Middle School in Pennsylvania, the U.S. State and Federal governments could save millions by simply switching computer fonts.

This conclusion resulted from a school science fair experiment Mirchandani conducted after noticing how many printed handouts he was receiving in class.

He noted that most teachers used four common fonts on printed documents: Times New Roman, Century Gothic, Comic Sans, and Garamond.

So Mirchandani used commercial computer software called APFill Ink to help him determine exactly how much printer ink was used for some sample letters he selected in each of these fonts.

He found that by using the Garamond font his school could reduce its ink usage by 24% and save $21,000 per year. 

Mirchandani was encouraged by his teacher to publish his results in the Journal of Emerging Investigators, which then asked him to take his findings one step further to show how much the government could save with the font change. 

So he repeated his experiment using samples form the Government Printing Office website and found that the government could save 30% in ink costs by using Garamond. (According to the Government Services Administration it spends approximately $467 million on ink costs annually. That means that this sixth grader's experiment could save the federal government $136 million per year and an additional $234 million could be saved if the state governments joined in.)

Printer ink really is expensive

“Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume,” Mirchandani told CNN.

According to CNN, Chanel No. 5 perfume costs $38 per ounce and the same amount of Hewlett-Packard printer ink can cost up to $75.

So, if you’re looking to cut personal costs you might want to stop typing in Comic Sans.