Social Absurdities... "This page intentionally left blank"?

That one always bothered me.

Another that bothered the hell out of me was the few times I was on unemployment I would have things mailed to me saying that in a few days I will have my check mailed to me. Still don’t understand why I was mailed the first envelope when my check got there seriously 2 days later.

I’m on a payment plan with the IRS cuz we owed $4000 this year. I pay promptly, on time, and every month I still get a big, fat envelope that contains 4 pages ‘splaining that now I owe $100 less than I did last month. Don’t know why in the hell it takes 4 pages to tell me that.

There is a legal reason for that “page intentionally left blank”. It’s to protect the agency or company in case of a lawsuit – otherwise someone could say “there was printing on that page that the plaintiff is not showing”.

They do the same thing on wills and trusts to ensure that the document itself is complete.

It’s not absurd at all.

Read this

@elbanditoroso It’s not absurd that they say the page is blank intentionally. It’s absurd that the page is blank at all. I can see tradition leading to blank pages in certain places in book production, and I can see wanting to keep the pagination identical between print and electronic versions, but in bills or in electronic-only documents… there is no reason to have any blank pages.

@elbanditoroso ”...It’s not absurd at all….”

Sure I get it. Part of the absurdity is printing words on a page that is claiming to be blank.

Kind of like the old Harry Mudd Star Trek episode where they thwarted the evil robots by telling them that everything Harry says is a lie… Then Harry says, “I am lying”... Robot head explodes and Kirk gets the girl. Everybody happy. But I feel like these forms are attempting to program me like a robot.

@elbanditoroso Wouldn’t it suffice to just number the pages “½”, “2/2”, and omit the blank page? It says right on the others that there’s no third page, meaning that anything not on pages 1 or 2 isn’t part of that document.

@jerv, whether it would make sense or not, you have 100+ years of practice and legal backing for the current method, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon.