Why This Page Is Intentionally Blank

Intention

Before you’re an author, this little comment is reasonably offensive.

After you’ve written something formal like a book, it starts to make perfect sense…

[ad#inline-body]

Why!?!

Can’t you tell?

I mean who hasn’t run across that phrase on a page and thought – well of course it’s a blank page, it doesn’t have anything on it.

And the people putting it there couldn’t tell? Or they thought I needed an explanation? Really?

Yes – really

But when you’ve got a book to publish, you turn to the formal nature of these sorts of things. And you know what – sometimes you have to put blank pages in there because you have to.

And then 42% of the readers will point that out to you.

Hey – did you know that there’s a blank page before chapter 17?

And in reality, the blank page before chapter 17 is there to make sure that chapter 17 starts on the facing page of the book. The one in front of the title page is there for the same reason, and the two at the end of the book are there because the printer demands them…

No choice

So there’s no choice in the matter, you do what you have to do.

And then the phrase “This page intentionally blank” makes sense because you realize that it stops well-meaning people from suggesting to you that you’ve got an “extra” blank page in there, and lets you know when you run across one that doesn’t belong.

(Online publishing adds a new wrinkle to the mix – am I going to give the e-reader the exact same material as in the physical book, or am I going to edit it to make the result “better”… I chose the former for my simple e-book version of “The Revised LinkedIn Personal Trainer“, and the latter for the Kindle version.)

Intention

That’s what it gets back to.

The author is sharing her intention to leave a blank page right there.

Yes, you can complain about the phrase, note that it really isn’t technically correct (because the words “This page intentionally blank” make the page no longer blank), and even complain to the author, but at the end of the day, the author knows that she shared her intentions with you and that your comments can be ignored;-)