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Atlanta isn't shrinking. It just seems that way from the new BellSouth telephone book.
The five-volume set of books being delivered by the company this month has 21 percent fewer pages than last year, dropping to 5,288 from 6,727. That's despite a 2 percent increase in the number of residential and business listings.
BellSouth got more listings into less space by compressing the type, basically eliminating the white space between the letters, without reducing the size of the letters. The type in the Atlanta phone book already is the smallest BellSouth uses in any of its books.
Atlanta is one of four cities where BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS) is using the technology to reduce the size of its telephone books and the related expense of producing them. The company used the compressed type for phone books in Miami; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Charlotte, N.C., earlier this year, said Terrie Hudson, director of operations support for BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Corp., the BellSouth subsidiary that produces the books.
BellSouth also has reduced the size of the print in directories throughout Georgia and many of the other more than 500 directories it publishes in nine states.
The changes are saving the company money, although company officials won't disclose the exact amount. They prefer to discuss the savings in terms of the 255,000 trees and...