Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/61

 Economies in Writing and Printing

Even with such exceptions, a fonetic spelling would save the writing and printing of many letters, and would permit the use of a greater number of words on the written or printed page. Estimates made with various experimental fonetic alfabets indicate a saving of at least 15 per cent. This would not only mean great economies of time and effort, and correlativly of expense, in writing, tipe-writing, and tipe-setting; but corresponding economies in paper, ink, and all other materials used in correspondence and in printing. It would effect reductions in the total cost of preswork, binding, and distribution (handling, postage, and express) of printed matter. The saving in newsprint paper alone would be enormous a—saving, moreover, that, to the convenience of the reader, would hav to be made by reducing the size rather than the number of pages, unless newspaper publishers wer redy to for-go printing ful-page and fractional-page advertizments.

Cost of Useless Letters

The simplifications so far proposed by the Board and used in this Handbook would effect an economy of only about 1.5 per cent; but if all the unnecessary letters used in our current spelling should be dropt, the saving would amount to about 5 per cent.

On this basis, and using data obtaind in the census of 1900, Mr. Henry Holt, the publisher, a member of the Simplified Spelling Board, made a painstaking calculation of the mony that would hav been saved that year in the United States thru the adoption of such a degree of simplification in English spelling.

The total was in excess of $35,000,000. In the present year (1920) it would be a great deal more. In