Obama proposes addition to our alphabet

This is incredible. Barack Obama’s administration has proposed a radical, and unprecedented idea in their ongoing commitment to environmental responsibility, and forward thinking. It is an addition to our modern, latin (English) alphabet. Named “tache”, it’s a merging of “t” and “h” to form a new character type called a “fusion diagraph”.

Research and predictive modeling conducted at Carnegie Mellon University over the past year has concluded that because the combination “th” occurs more than any other in the latin alphabet (primarily in English), the reduction of it’s double-character footprint to a single-character footprint, could save a staggering 1.21 billion newspaper pages per year in the US alone. This would translate to a 3% decrease in the cutting of domestic forests to produce that new newsprint in the same 12 month period.

Interestingly, this idea is not a new one, though it’s goals certainly are. The “th” combination goes back to the Middle Ages when a fused character existed called “thorn“.

At any rate, “tache’s” implications for computer keyboards, spell checkers & dictionaries, as well as school children’s learning of their ABCs, not to mention our adult eyes acceptance this typographic “new kid on the block” have yet to be fully explored, but I for one, am knocked out by this radical thinking, and am sure it is not the last to come from Obama’s clearly open-minded approach to leadership.