As for the former portion, I think the goal here is to force the applicant to be as succinct as possible to make the review process faster. I think you're right

As for the former portion, I think the goal here is to force the applicant to be as succinct as possible to make the review process faster. I think you're right in that it would result in a larger number of patents, and there are certainly patents that couldn't fit on a single page without omitting a valuable prelude. For example, an algorithm patent may require some initial exposition to delineate the novelty of the idea. The latter portion of your comment is not necessary and does not contribute to the discussion at hand. There are many possible reasons for using "her" instead of "him" and the majority of them are valid.