NEW YORK, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- The pages of New York Times started to get slimmer by 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) on Monday, which is expected to save the paper 10 million dollars a year.

    Several other major newspapers have already adopted the industry standard of 12-inch format (30.5 cm), including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

    Monday's edition of The New York Times is the first to feature the paper's smaller format. All the news that's fit to print is being squeezed into smaller pages.

    The changes leave 10 percent less space for news on each page, but The New York Times is moving some local New York coverage to a new blog they call City Room.

    The printed page is the same depth, but an inch and a half narrower.

    There are few design changes that will be obvious to the reader, except for the overall page dimensions.

    There are the same number of columns per page with the exception of a slight adjustment to body type, for example.

    A dress page column with 720 words before is about 50 to 60words shorter now.

    The change at The New York Times was originally expected to occur in mid-2008, but the company got its presses reconfigured sooner than anticipated.