This page intentionally left blank
[I recently ran into the above in an e-book; i've seen it from time to time in paper books, too. This just confuses me. If it said "This page intentionally left (otherwise) blank", i might have a better time of it. Because if the page has a message printed on it, it's not really blank!
Furthermore it leads me to expect more blank pages, some of which may have been accidentally left blank. And how about other blank spaces? Since they (by definition) don't have labels stating the intention (or lack thereof) of their blankness, what are we to infer?
And why doesn't the "This page intentionally left blank" have a period at the end of it? Isn't it still a sentence, even if it's on an otherwise blank page? And if it's not a sentence, why does it have the first letter capitalized? It could just as easily have read "this page intentionally left blank" and there would probably be few complaints about the capitalization deviance.
I guess i would most rather see "this page intentionally left (otherwise) blank" on otherwise blank pages.
Or just leave them blank, and don't confuse me (any more than i already am).]
omg. too funny. it's probably a rule somewhere in the Chicago Manual of Style . . . publishers refuse to question that book in any way.
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