Saving ink: Font matters
April 9, 2010 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Solutions
We recently reported on a story about a college that changed the default font in its e-mail system to save ink when students print messages. Here’s a study that backs up the school’s decision.
Dutch company Printer.com ran a test of several popular fonts to see which used the least amount of ink.
Here are the rankings, starting with the most ink-friendly:
- Century Gothic
- Ecofont
- Times New Roman
- Calibri
- Verdana
- Arial
- Sans Serif
- Trebuchet
- Tahoma
- Franklin Gothic Medium
The difference can be substantial — Century Gothic, for example, uses 31% less ink than Arial, according to Printer.com.
But there is a catch: Some of the fonts that use less ink, including Century Gothic, are wider than those that don’t, meaning you may use more paper by switching fonts.
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Tags: fonts, ink, Printer.com

April 12th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Is there a Century Gothic Condensed? That would take care of the width problem. Or for word processing, use Word Perfect, which has a Make It Fit option which can cut the number of pages down by subtly changing font sizes, margins, and line spacing. Of course we can use draft mode when printing most things and cut down ink use considerably.