Save on Printing Costs by Switching Fonts

A lot of parents teaching from public domain materials print out the texts and have them bound into notebooks for their children. When using a curriculum that offers a week by week reading list, parents may even opt to print all of the week's readings and lessons grouped together, to make it easier to study on the go.

Other parents may purchase books but will create their own worksheets to supplement them, especially sheets for math, spelling or copywork and penmanship.

All of this printing we do costs money. In paper and electricity, and also in ink. There are a number of ways to save on printing supplies, but there is always room for improvement. Well, here's a painless improvement: change your font!

What, change my font? Really? Yes! It turns out that the default font in many programs, Arial, uses more ink than other commonly used fonts. According to tests conducted by a printer rating web site, changing from Arial to Times Roman or Century Gothic should save users 31 percent in costs. For the average small business or home user that's between $20 and $80 a year in ink. Savings are higher for institutions and large businesses. Environmental savings come from using less product, as well as from reducing packaging and transportation.

Another font that rated well in the testing was EcoFont, developed by Dutch company SPRANQ and offered as a free, open source download. The concept of the font is simple: little holes in each letter mean that it takes less ink to print it. Used at the recommended font size of 9 or 10, the holes don't show at all. Savings from EcoFont were slightly better than those with Times, but not quite as good as those obtained using Century Gothic.

EcoFont software is now available for purchase. Once installed on your computer it allows users to add the holes to any other font, so it is possible to make a "holey" version of Century Gothic that will help save even more printing costs. SPRANQ estimates that savings in ink or toner are about 25 percent, so switching from Arial to a holey version of Century Gothic should in theory result in quite a significant savings. While the printed documents are not quite as dark as we are used to seeing, legibility is not affected at the recommended font sizes.

Sources:

"Sustainable printing using the EcoFont software" EcoFont web site

"Printing costs: does font choice make a difference?" Printer.com blog