Mar 21 2009
Single-spacing and Double-siding
It’s been a while since I had to turn in a report for school, but even in college courses, it was a requirement from professors to have the reports be formatted with large margins (generally 1” top and bottom & 1.25” left and right), double-spaced paragraphs and single-sided printing. Imagine the amount of paper, ink and energy that could be saved if these standards got a little tweaking.
I realize why the teachers, professors and other academic professionals want reports submitted in this fashion. The larger margins allow room for notes when grading. The extra space in between lines allows for grammatical and spelling errors to be marked in drafts. A single-sided stapled report is easier to flip through than double-sided, and I’m sure when teachers are faced with hundreds of reports to grade, this would be a time-saving trick.
Not even taking into account middle and high school students, the 2000 census reported over 14.3 million students were enrolled in undergraduate programs. If each of those students had to submit only one 10 page report during that entire year, there would have been over 143 million sheets of paper used. This doesn’t even account for drafts or reprints of any kind.
Just by being able to single-line space the document, that alone would save 3 pages. Allowing double-sided printing takes care of another 3 pages, leaving the final report only 4 sheets of paper versus the original 10. That’s a substantial paper savings for 14 million students.
As for the teachers, they could still hang on to the larger margins for writing room. Even if they made all their notes on a separate sheet of paper, the overall paper usage is still cut in half, and this is a much more sustainable practice.
