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Subject:Blank pages, take 2! From:geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA Date:Fri, 13 Jun 1997 12:50:36 -0500
In response to my guess that "printing blank pages probably
arose from the practice of marking up blank pages on
printer's dummies", Elna Tymes responded <<Good guess,
Geoff, but you didn't go back quite far enough. This one
dates from the military hardware-writer days, when certain
MIL-SPECs dictated every little thing on how to write
manuals. Some of the MIL-SPECs specifically ordered that
"This page intentionally left blank" be printed on an
otherwise blank page.>>
So to paraphrase: "In the beginning was the military, and
the government saw that it was good, and decreed that other
publishers should suddenly exist. And lo! these publishers
found themselves constrained by MILSPEC, and they were
wroth." <gdr>
Seriously, I was aware that this convention was part of
MILSPEC (probably the one thing I _do_ know about the
beast), but I hadn't heard any good evidence that this was
the real origin. Any urban anthropologists who can confirm
this? I'm sticking to my guns in the meantime... I suspect
that photolithography and manual stripping of film predates
MILSPEC by a good number of years, so don't count out my
guess just yet!
--Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.
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