Two of the pages in a letter I just got had this printed on them: ‘this page has been left blank intentionally’.
Why? that’s two sides, a whole page left blank, but it isn’t blank is it? It has ink on it! And why not start a new section on the back of the page where this is written? I wonder how many thousands of pages are wasted. How many trees it would save? Make text 1 font size smaller. See how much that would save. And if the page is meant to be blank, leave it blank, to save ink!
Ah now this I can answer or at least a bit.
Different reasons but usually it’s for the purpose of ensuring the full pages printed are all there and none removed. Legal docs, exam papers and similar tend to have them but most have front cover pages that need to be turned / opened for use so more often that not you lose a page (back page of front cover)
In health and nursing care settings controlled drugs have to be stored and recorded in a separate drugs register that must by law be hard-backed and bound with numbered pages so the pages can’t be torn out and the register fiddled and altered.
I would buy a hard-backed bound book with numbered pages from stationary suppliers that print off in bulk and they nearly always have a blank front and back for the same reason.
If it’s say a 50 paged book it means 50 pages are numbered. Printers will therefore need an extra one or two pages for fictional use and if so, they’ll put in the intentional blank ones
These links will explain it better than I can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recto_and_verso
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page
When I worked in legal it took me ages to stop typing out statements, court docs or wills using punctuation. Other than full stops, nothing else goes in because you can alter a punctuation mark with black pen and alter the entire context of what it means.
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Wow, interesting. I guess I understand. Thanks x
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