In a user manual I came across recently.
A friend of mine worked for the US Census Bureau for a while. Among their myriad binders and forms, etc. was a page full of tear-off perforated wallet size cards which contained no text or information on them whatsoever other than “do not distribute this card” printed on the back. And no, I have absolutely no idea what the purpose of these things was supposed to be. Nor apparently does anyone else.
So of course he dutifully tore them all off and quite deliberately handed them out to people. He gave me one. I might still have it someplace.
its to tell you the page is not accidentally blank. laying out text for a physical document has limitations on the page count and generally needs to be in multiples of 4 due to double-sided printing and paper stock options. if you have a layout that can’t cover the entire surface of your print media but you need to include the entire physical sheet, (especially if its a technical / legal document) its best to just say “there isn’t meant to be anything here, don’t’ worry.” in so many words.
otherwise you get people calling / emailing being like “your form is missing a part! there’s a whole blank sheet when I print it out! >:(“
Shouldn’t it be multiples of 2 instead of 4 since is a spiral binding? Idk how manufacturing works and if they cut the sheets during binding so just curious.
I don’t work on the print side of things, but I generally understand that printers will print the sheets on larger sized paper then trim down to the final product, so even if its a spiral bound book, the raw sheets are gonna be on larger sheets regardless, thus the multiples of 4 (two pages for each side of the piece of paper).
There’s actually a purpose for this I found out after joking about similar on exam papers. Turns out if you don’t mark the page intentionally blank people freak out that they’re missing a page.
But why even have the blank page to start with? It always feels like a waste of paper (and now ink).
lots of styles like to open a chapter on the same side, so if the previous chapter is one page short, you pad it.
As Gratux explained style or padding. Once one section (or topic) of an exam is done they occasionally pad it and the last (back) page is generally left blank and is the designated “doodle to amuse yourself/examiner” space.
As silly as it looks, there’s a good reason for this. You can’t just have a blank page because the user is going to wonder if something is missing. You have to say that the page is blank on purpose, at which point it’s no longer blank. They could say “The only thing on this page is this sentence explaining that there is nothing else on this page” but that seems somehow more ridiculous.
I have also seen ‘this page intentionally left blank’ which i feel is slightly less confusing
Same here, seems almost like a standard phrase.
But what’s the purpose of the blank page?
A piece of paper has two sides but not all text needs two pages.
Similarly, most books are printed in signatures. Several pages on one sheet printed on a press, then folded and trimmed and then bound to make a book. A signature almost always has to have at minimum a 4 page signature.
It’s a common convention for chapters to start on the right page, check a physical book
well it was anyway.
No it’s not, there is text there
I’ve always been unreasonably bothered by that
Like Homer signing that page to say OK.
“In the area “do not write in this space”, the father wrote “Ok”.”
This had better not be a philosophy book.
…that page has some cut to balance the preceding fill… 🥁
