Which is sillier?

[lovingboth]

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

.. or ..

THIS PAGE IS NOT INTENTIONALY LEFT BLANK

?

In both cases, merely by printing on it, the page is not blank. The second one is rarer, but spotted - complete with the spelling mistake - today.

Comments

[doug]

:)

I've seen "NO TEST MATERIAL ON THIS PAGE" in exams, which makes me smile because you know they've run in to pedants in the past.

I also like "THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK" on versos and "THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY RIGHT BLANK" on rectos.

[lovingboth]

The sensible thing to do would be to have 'this document should contain no blank pages' or '.. 3 blank pages after page 52' or similar somewhere on the copyright etc page...

[doug]

Having done a bit of exam invigilation, and a lot more of circulating of long documents to ostensibly smart people, I would guess that a notice at the front saying there are blank pages elsewhere in the document would be almost useless in terms of stopping people worrying that there was an omission in their version! "Note: the next page is blank" and "Note: the previous page is blank" might work, but only just, although I've not seen those in the wild. I have seen "[END OF SECTION]" typeset in the centre of the page, and of course there's the convention in fiction of printing some little graphical glyph or dots or something in the middle of a recto (e.g. "...oooOOOooo...") so the next chapter can start on a verso.

You are very you...

[judiff]

So like if a psych-professional asked you what a Rorschach Blot like reminded you of would you like say "ink on a piece of paper"?

(Dunno if that is an urban myth about Spectrum people or a thing that has like actualy happened)

Re: You are very you...

[lovingboth]

A favourite book is The Right Stuff, on the first American astronauts:

In one test the interviewer gave each candidate a blank sheet of paper and asked him to study it and describe what he saw in it. There was no one right response to this sort of test, because it was designed to force the candidate to free-associate in order to see where his mind wandered. The test-wise pilot knew that the main thing was to stay on dry land and not go swimming.

As they described with some relish later on in the [Bachelor Officers Quarters], quite a few studied the sheet of paper and then looked the interviewer in the eye and said, "All I see is a blank sheet of paper." This was not a "correct" answer, since the shrinks probably made a note of "inhibited imaginative capacity" or some goddamned thing, but neither did it get you in trouble.

One man said, "I see a field of snow." Well, you might get away with that, as long as you didn't go any further... as long as you did not thereupon start ruminating about freezing to death or getting lost in the snow and running into bears or something of that sort.

But Conrad ... well, the man is sitting across the table from Conrad and gives him the sheet of paper and asks him to study it and tell him what he sees. Conrad stares at the piece of paper and then looks up at the man and says in a wary tone, as if he fears a trick: "But it's upside down."

This so startles the man, he actually leans across the table and looks at this absolutely blank sheet of paper to see if it's true -- and only after he is draped across the table does he realize that he has been had. He looks at Conrad and smiles a smile of about [one degree above freezing].

This was not the way to produce the Halo Effect.

For this and other things, Charles "Pete" Conrad was not selected to be one of the first US astronauts, but did get into the second batch and ended up being the answer to one of my favourite trivia questions as the third man to walk on the Moon.

[ludy]

It's better than the station announcement of "please stand behind the yellow line at all times" - how are you supposed to get on the train?!

[doug]

Yes! And also "this door must remain locked at all times" or "this door must remain closed at all times" - then why not brick it up?! A better version of that is "this door must be kept locked [or closed] when not in use". But even then, there will be a short period between the unlocking or opening and actually going through it, and another short period on the other side.

And on building sites you sometimes see "Safety helmets, boots and vests must be worn at all times", which would make it pretty uncomfortable in bed and impractical in the bath or shower. Another way of thinking about that sign is that it means you mustn't have shiny new protective equipment - it has to be worn, not new and undamaged. Looking at actual people on building sites you can imagine that one might even be true :)

[ludy]

:)

[rhialto]

But which side is "behind"? From where you're standing, it is always on the other side...

[ludy]

Unless you were born on a train you are always starting from the platform side at the beginning of a journey!