News
23/04/2008 - They're getting smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller...
Glitch at the printers makes reading this year's phone book harder on the eyes
Mike Sadava, The Edmonton Journal
Published: 22/04/2008 10:22 am
EDMONTON - Talk about a sight for sore eyes.
Thanks to a printing glitch, finding phone numbers in the White Pages has again been made more difficult.
The Yellow Pages Group, which is in charge of the phone books, unintentionally reduced the font to six-point from 6.5-point.
To add to the difficulty in reading the book, the font is also lighter than before.
Paul Batchelor, the Yellow Pages Group vice-president of sales for Alberta and British Columbia, said Monday from Vancouver that the change was the
result of a printing error that happened at the plant that printed the books.
"It was not our intention to have it come out like that," Batchelor said. "We made some production changes, and when we saw how it came out we were surprised as much as anyone else."
A similar blip occurred in Victoria, "and it wasn't well received there either," he said.
The Yellow Pages Group, which produces all of the phone books across Canada outside Saskatchewan, is not satisfied with the way it turned out, but Batchelor would not identify the company that did the printing.
People eating lunch Monday at the Seniors Association of Greater Edmonton on Churchill Square were not impressed with the changes, which did not affect the Yellow Pages.
"Holy Moses," said Olga Skitsko, who did a double take when she saw the new phone book for the first time. "Honestly, that's awful."
James McAtamney, 62, said he could not read it without a magnifying glass, and he suggested that this version should be scrapped and a new legible version printed.
"They could make confetti for weddings out of the books and then sell the confetti," he said.
Sean Carroll, who is visually impaired, couldn't even read the phone books before the font was reduced, said: "I've seen bigger print in a pocket Bible."
Carroll said he copes by having a plan with Shaw that allows unlimited use of directory assistance.
This is the second time in three years that the font size has been reduced on phone books.
In 2006, the change was deliberate, partly to reduce the amount of paper that was used.
At the time the number of columns on each page went to five from four, allowing the number of pages to be reduced to 1,000 from 1,400.
This time the inadvertent change in font has resulted in a minimal change in the number of pages, which is about the same as last year, Batchelor said.
The bright side of this glitch is that it has inspired the Yellow Pages Group to form a task force to investigate the best font sizes, he said.
In the meantime, people with sight problems can go online to canada411.ca, an electronic directory that allows the size of the print to be adjusted.
Although the Telus name is on the cover of the book and the phone company provides the directory list, Telus sold off the rights seven years ago, and "Telus has not had anything to do with it," said Telus spokesman Chris Gerritsen. "It's not our deal."
msadava@thejournal.canwest.com
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=bb6de304-b7c3-4cf2-a77e-ed122054e78e
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