From the mailbag: "Newspaper printing technology is better than ever. So if the NYT is going to shrink the paper, why not shrink point sizes of story text a little bit too?!? (I mean, the words like huge on those new pages.)" Well, at least two reasons we can think of. One: Print designers are crazy and say things such as "There's NO WAY this is legible below 8.7, are you a MONSTER?" and the like. Two: Only old people actually read newspapers, and the mailboxes would literally overflow with hand-written complaints if the Times shrunk their type. If you think the type is huge, that's only because you're under 50.