16 Feb
2003
16 Feb
'03
6:17 p.m.
Megan, in a recent post (and probably every other post, but I wasn't
looking) has included in her sig line the following text;
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | email: mbg at world.std.com |
| | |
| "this space | (s/ at /@/) |
| unavoidably left blank" | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (DEC '77-'98) | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
Can anybody shed some light on the origin and use of the term "This space
intenionally left blank"?
regards
Doug Jackson
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16 Feb
16 Feb
6:34 p.m.
Can anybody shed some light on the origin and use of
the term "This space
intenionally left blank"?
It's so you know that the page isn't blank as the result of a printing
error. The perfect example is one of my Borland Prolog manuals. It has a
page that was Unintentionally left blank!
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
7 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
Indeed, and as I sometimes take pains to point out, the spaces left
"INTENTIONALLY BLANK" are not blank at all. My preferred notation which
IIRC I first saw in an ICL manual is : "This page intentionally contains
no information" or words to that effect.
-- hbp
Can anybody
shed some light on the origin and use of the term "This space
intenionally left blank"?
It's so you know that the page isn't blank as the result of a printing
error. The perfect example is one of my Borland Prolog manuals. It has a
page that was Unintentionally left blank! 
17 Feb
17 Feb
2:46 a.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
>> Can anybody shed some light on the origin and use of the term "This
>> space
>> intenionally left blank"?
>
I beleive that the origin of this comes from military 'technical
orders', or TO's. These are the service manuals for
military gear, and they are frequenctly updated by replacing pages and
sections. The update process for TO's can
be very complicated. To reduce the need to replace the table of
contents or other sections that refer to yet other sections
of the manual, blank pages are often inserted to keep the T.O.C. aligned
with the page numbers.
10:12 a.m.
On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Hans B Pufal wrote:
Indeed, and as I sometimes take pains to point out,
the spaces left
"INTENTIONALLY BLANK" are not blank at all. My preferred notation which
IIRC I first saw in an ICL manual is : "This page intentionally contains
no information" or words to that effect.
But the fact that it was deliberate IS important information.
16 Feb
16 Feb
8:25 p.m.
Megan, in a recent post (and probably every other
post, but I wasn't
looking) has included in her sig line the following text;
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | email: mbg at world.std.com |
| | |
| "this space | (s/ at /@/) |
| unavoidably left blank" | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (DEC '77-'98) | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
Can anybody shed some light on the origin and use of the term "This
space intenionally left blank"?
If you were to look up her older postings in the archives (or Usenet
postings which you can find in Google), you could probably figure it
out. The "DEC '77-'98" toward the bottom is a big hint, compare her
pre-98 and post-98 postings.
Eric
17 Feb
17 Feb
1:29 a.m.
Can anybody shed some light on the origin and use of
the term "This space
intenionally left blank"?
It was common for loose paper binder books (my own atempt at
translation - how ever you call it in english). If there was
an update comming, which had less pages than the ones to be
removed, empty papers where submitted, so the number of pages
did still work out. Otherwise maybe the pages between 5-3 and
5-6 woud have been 'missing' in the eyes of an uninformed
reader. So two blank pages have been delivered. Now to show
that these are not printing errors the text was printed on
there.
Take it like dummy records in a data base, sometimes existion
for special key values...
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
10:08 a.m.
New subject: FAQ? Re: Why did they publish 'blank' pages
We've been through THIS one often, and recently.
There are actually two questions:
Q1: Why are the blank pages marked "intentionally blank"?
A1: To make it clear that they are NOT blank due to duplicating errors.
A2: Because saying that a page is blank by mistake would make the printer
lose face.
Q2: Why are there blank pages?
A1: Due to the impossibility of planning accurately, and changes that
might involve increasing or decreasing the number of pages, extra pages
are allowed for to cover any increase.
A2: Printing and binding of a section using some technologies results in
sections (or "signatures") that must be multiples of a number (4, 16,
etc.) Therefore, if the actual desired length is not zero modulus that
multiple, there will be extra pages.
A3: Certain rigid "style"s mandate that a section must ALWAYS start on a
right hand, or odd numbered, page. If a section has an odd number of
pages, then a blank must be added for alignment.
A4: So that you'll have a place to scribble notes, other than on the
margins of the printed pages.
A5: An idea pushed by the paper mills (see also "paperless office")
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7905
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8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
bshannon＠tiac.net -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
doug_jackson＠citadel.com.au -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de -
hansp＠aconit.org -
healyzh＠aracnet.com