WASHINGTON: An Indian-American student's bold suggestion to the U.S. government that it could save $136 million a year by simply switching fonts from Times New Roman to Garamond in government printing has caught national attention, with printing officials terming his work as "remarkable" while others dismissed it saying he was too young to understand the "oddity" of font measurement.

Suvir Mirchandani, a 14-year-old middle-school student, came up with the suggestion after analysing ink use for a school project and then expanding his research to government, which spends a whopping $1.8 billion annually on printing.

"Mirchandani is only 14, so he can be excused for not understanding this weirdo oddity of the way fonts are measured, but the biggest issue with his argument is that he measured Garamond at the wrong size!" says a feature in Fastcodesign.com.

Citing blogger Thomas Phinney, a font enthusiast with an MS in printing, it comes to the conclusion that using less ink might cost the government slightly less money, but it's not going to come from switching to Garamond.

"Garamond's letters are smaller at the same height as other fonts, making it less legible at the same size when printed out," it said.

"And even if the government did switch to a font that maintained legibility at the same size as Times New Roman while using less ink, the government would likely not save much money by switching to it," Fastcodesign.com said.
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