Chinese ideograms are, I suspect, a mystery to most non-Asians. They
can be perceived as beautiful or out of place in the modern world.
Being so complex, it is difficult to comprehend how they are learned
by a billion  people. So, merely out of curiosity, which is more
efficient, manually writing English in the roman alphabet or writing
Chinese ideograms? By that I mean for example, copying a simple, short
paragraph (say 300 English words) by handwriting, using the time
required as a benchmark.
In addition, not to be done by experts in speed writing of either form,
but by average persons.

K22,

Thanks for accepting my findings as your official answer! I've
reposted the links below.

This doesn't exactly answer the question, but it may be of interest:

Taipei Times: Benefits of written Chinese
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2006/06/23/2003315163

This is more on target, I think:

"In Chapter 1 'The Chinese Written Language'of Tao: The Watercourse
Way, Alan Watts talks about how there are fewer strokes in many
Chinese words than there are in their English equivalent:

?our customary bafflement by Chinese ideograms is really a matter of
uninformed prejudice. They are supposed to be outlandish, weird,
devious, and as tricky as 'he mysterious East.'Although the K?ang-hsi
dictionary of +1716 lists about 40,000 ideograms, a reasonably
literate person needs about 5,000, and a comparably literate Wetserner
would know quite that many words of his own language. The difficulty
of recognizing and identifying ideograms is surely no greater than
with such aother complex patterns as the various kinds of flowers,
plants, butterflies, trees, and wild animals.

In other words, Chinese is simpler than it looks, and may, in general,
be both written and read more rapidly than English. The English MAN
requires ten strokes of the pen, whereas the Chinese ? requires but
two. TREE needs thirteen, but ? only four. Water is sixteen, but ? is
five. Mountain is eighteen, but ? is three..."

Sinosplice: Chinese Character Stroke Stats
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2006/05/12/chinese-character-stroke-stats

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: chinese ideograms faster OR "more efficient" english
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chinese+ideograms+faster+OR+%22more+efficient%22+english

Best,
Pink

Thanks, Pink
K22

This doesn't exactly answer the question, but it may be of interest:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2006/06/23/2003315163

This is more on target, I think:

"In Chapter 1 'The Chinese Written Language'of Tao: The Watercourse
Way, Alan Watts talks about how there are fewer strokes in many
Chinese words than there are in their English equivalent:

?our customary bafflement by Chinese ideograms is really a matter of
uninformed prejudice. They are supposed to be outlandish, weird,
devious, and as tricky as 'he mysterious East.'Although the K?ang-hsi
dictionary of +1716 lists about 40,000 ideograms, a reasonably
literate person needs about 5,000, and a comparably literate Wetserner
would know quite that many words of his own language. The difficulty
of recognizing and identifying ideograms is surely no greater than
with such aother complex patterns as the various kinds of flowers,
plants, butterflies, trees, and wild animals.

In other words, Chinese is simpler than it looks, and may, in general,
be both written and read more rapidly than English. The English MAN
requires ten strokes of the pen, whereas the Chinese ? requires but
two. TREE needs thirteen, but ? only four. Water is sixteen, but ? is
five. Mountain is eighteen, but ? is three..."

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2006/05/12/chinese-character-stroke-stats

For a different view, see http://www.pinyin.info.

Several languages that formerly employed Chinese writing have
abandoned it in favor of a more suitable writing system.  The
Vietnamese language abolished it a century ago to use the Latin
alphabet, while the Korean language have minimized Hanja usage in
favor of the indigenous Hangul.

secret901-ga

You're highly recommended to read "The Chinese Language: Fact and
Fantasy" by Sinologist John DeFrancis
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Language:_Fact_and_Fantasy).
 A sample chapter is shown here:
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html.  It goes
a long way to demystify the mystique of the Chinese writing system.

secret901-ga

Pink: Post your comment as an answer. ( Previous time for some unknown
reason I was unable to pay you...try again )
K22/monroe

Thank you very much for the five stars and the generous tip!

~Pink

In every day use, the chinese writings will take longer even in the
simplified version by the mainland chinese. But often, the total word
count will be less in ideograms.
Also, when it comes to literature, a few ideograms goes a long way.
Just take a simple chinese poem and translate it and you'll see what I
mean.

My uncle had a Chinese typewriter.

The characters were in a large tray, the 'hammer' picked up one
character and used it once, then put it back in its slot.

Next to the typewriter was a pile of trays containing further characters.

I understand that the advantage of ideograms is that a Mandarin
speaker can read something written by a Cantonese speaker, but they
can not understand each others speech. I found it quite amusing that
many Singaporese have to communicate in 'Singlish'.