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Subject:Re: This page left blank From:Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 12 Jun 1997 10:49:59 -0700
geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA wrote:
>
> The origin of the phrase "this page intentionally left
> blank" probably lies in traditional publishing: When you
> send a "printer's dummy" (more politely, a mockup) of your
> camera-ready copy to the printer, you mark all the blank
> pages this way so that the printer knows that you intended
> the page to be blank.
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.
As these hardware writers migrated into other forms of tech writing,
they brought certain conventions with them - among them dot page
numbering schemes (e.g., page 1.2.2 for revision 2 of page 2 of chapter
1, and a subsequent version of 1-2.2 or 1-2.b), numbered paragraphs so
that any idiot could match a paragraph to an outline, etc. Many of the
early computer systems had software manuals that looked much like DOD
documents - understandably, because most early computer systems were
developed and used in DOD applications.
As computer use began to spread to non-DOD applications, some of these
conventions disappeared, but it took the introduction of the personal
computer to really make a difference - at the time, Apple's approach to
documentation was quite radical, albeit welcome. Apple, of course, was
not the first to do away with numbered paragraphs and other DOD
conventions, but it went farther in the direction of user orientation
than most computer manuals of the time.
Anyway, enuf history.
Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems
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