This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
regarding tax information.

Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
intentionally left blank" printed on them.

Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."

--

Tony Cooper - Orlando Florida

On Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 2:55:02 PM UTC-4, Tony Cooper wrote:
> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
> regarding tax information.
>
> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
> intentionally left blank" printed on them.
>
> Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
> means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."

Where were you on October 11, 2019? Here's an incredibly stupid
column on the matter:

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/columnists/os-op-ask-orlando-blank-pages-david-whitley-20191011-d7exbbxs6zeqxgtmdtc45bzsry-story.html

All the links from Google explain why pages are left blank, but
not why that phrase is printed on blank pages. If you ask journal
editors, you learn that it has (or had) to do with postal regulations,
because in order to qualify for the reduced "periodicals" rate, there
couldn't be any blank pages (adding to the weight being carried).

That requirement may have been rescinded.

Tony Cooper:
> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
> regarding tax information.
>
> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
> intentionally left blank" printed on them.

You've never seen that before? I think of it as the sort of thing
that IBM would have done in their manuals in the 1960s or 1970s.

(But, that said, it's *been* about that long since I've looked at
one of their manuals, and I don't remember seeing the expression
much since then.)
--
Mark Brader "You can do this in a number of ways.
Toronto IBM chose to do all of them...
msb@vex.net why do you find that funny?" --D. Taylor

My text in this article is in the public domain.

On Thu, 17 Mar 2022 15:50:15 -0500, msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:

>Tony Cooper:
>> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
>> regarding tax information.
>>
>> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
>> intentionally left blank" printed on them.
>
>You've never seen that before? I think of it as the sort of thing
>that IBM would have done in their manuals in the 1960s or 1970s.

Of course I've seen it before. This is just the first time I've been
inclined to comment on it here.

There are many things we notice over a long period time, but give no
thought to. Then, one day, they bubble up in one's councious thinking
and leads one to comment.

Today it was "This page was intentionally left blank" and wondering
how one achieves the title of "pundit". Today's reading of the news
included some pundit's comment that Zelenskyy's attire (a t-shirt)
when he addressed Congress was inappropriate.

The "pundit" groused that Zelenskyy should have worn a suit when
addressing such an august body. He evidently thinks Zelenskyy's first
thought should have been how to dress for the occasion.

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/598424-pundit-ripped-for-criticizing-zelenskys-attire-for-address

"Pundit" may mean "expert in field who is often called on to speak on
the subject", but common sense must not be among the qualifications
for the title.

Tomorrow I may wonder why the Ukranian President's name is spelled
with one "y" in some reports and two "y"s in others.

--

Tony Cooper - Orlando Florida

Mark Brader:
>> You've never seen that before?

Tony Cooper:
> Of course I've seen it before. This is just the first time I've been
> inclined to comment on it here.

Oh. If you'd mentioned that, I wouldn't've been inclined to comment
on your posting.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "...literally (and I do mean 'literally'
msb@vex.net | quite literally)..." --Richard Heathfield

In message <ap073hdtg9kl6gd209gt2duptb14uauqr4@4ax.com> Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> wrote:
> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
> regarding tax information.

> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
> intentionally left blank" printed on them.

> Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
> means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."

You can’t send out legal forms with blank pages as the assumption will
be that a misprint occurred, so if a page is blank, you need to indicate
that it is supposed to be blank and not indicative of an entire pages
that is missing info.

Similarly for tax documents, without that note, people would be unsure
if they had the complete form with all the information they need.

I do see this less than I used to, as it seems more forms are not forced
into a specific pagination scheme, but when I do see it is it almost
always on financial statements of some kind.

You see a single document, but they are sending tens of thousands, if
not more.

--
There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still
So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world
at will.

On Thu, 17 Mar 2022 23:07:58 -0000 (UTC), Lewis
<g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> wrote:

>In message <ap073hdtg9kl6gd209gt2duptb14uauqr4@4ax.com> Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> wrote:
>> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
>> regarding tax information.
>
>> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
>> intentionally left blank" printed on them.
>
>> Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
>> means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."
>
>You can’t send out legal forms with blank pages as the assumption will
>be that a misprint occurred, so if a page is blank, you need to indicate
>that it is supposed to be blank and not indicative of an entire pages
>that is missing info.
>

If I had to guess who would not "get it", you would be one of my two
choices.

--

Tony Cooper - Orlando Florida

On 17-Mar-22 21:37, Tony Cooper wrote:

> "Pundit" may mean "expert in field who is often called on to speak on
> the subject", but common sense must not be among the qualifications
> for the title.

If a "pundit" can be relied upon to make some attention-grabbing
remarks, the media company will keep them on speed dial.

--
Sam Plusnet

In article <3m973ht4rbtbsfjh4n2v3ma0ipl4mg05l4@4ax.com>,
Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> wrote:

>Tomorrow I may wonder why the Ukranian President's name is spelled
>with one "y" in some reports and two "y"s in others.

A common issue with names written in a non-Latin, but alphabetic,
script: when you write them in English (or another language), do you
transliterate them or transcribe them? A transcription would attempt
to mimic or at least hint at the sound of the original; a
transliteration is a character-by-character representation of the
spelling.

For Slavic languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet, these have been
in tension for quite a while, with academics preferring a (reversible)
transliteration, and popular writers historically using a phonetic
respelling and lately something of a muddled transliteration (which
isn't reversible but also doesn't give as much of a hint about
pronunciation). So reporters used to write "Romanoff" and now write
"Romanov"; lots of well-known Slavic names in <-off> are now <-ov> or
<-ev> depending on the original Cyrillic -- although of course brand
names like "Smirnoff" haven't adopted this form.

Of course phonetic respellings differ depending on the target
language, which can be a problem for scholars or indeed multilingual
news agencies and photo bureaus -- as witness the last Soviet
president, Gorbachev, or Gorbatschow, or Gorbatchev, or Gorbačëv, or
Gorbachov, or Gorbatšov, or Gorbaczow.

In the case of the man named "Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Зеле́нский" by his
parents, and elected president as "Володимир Олександрович
Зеленський", as Wikipedia notes, official government documents like
passports use the current official Ukrainian standard transliteration,
which has it "Zelenskyy". Ukrainian uses both Cyrillic <і> and <и>,
and it seems that they are transliterated as Latin <i> and <y>,
respectively, in the current standard. (Note that "Volodymyr" is the
official transliteration of the Ukrainian reflex of Russian
"Vladimir".) For Russian, <и> is usually transliterated as <i>.
(Russian used to have the letter <і> but this was abolished in a
spelling reform.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

In article <slrnt37fqe.25p3.g.kreme@zephyrus.local>,
Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> wrote:
> In message <ap073hdtg9kl6gd209gt2duptb14uauqr4@4ax.com> Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
> > regarding tax information.

> > Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
> > intentionally left blank" printed on them.

> > Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
> > means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."

> You can‘t send out legal forms with blank pages as the assumption will
> be that a misprint occurred, so if a page is blank, you need to indicate
> that it is supposed to be blank and not indicative of an entire pages
> that is missing info.

> Similarly for tax documents, without that note, people would be unsure
> if they had the complete form with all the information they need.

> I do see this less than I used to, as it seems more forms are not forced
> into a specific pagination scheme, but when I do see it is it almost
> always on financial statements of some kind.

Pamplets/booklets are generally paginated in fours if printed.

> You see a single document, but they are sending tens of thousands, if
> not more.

> --

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

On 2022-03-17, Lewis wrote:

> In message <ap073hdtg9kl6gd209gt2duptb14uauqr4@4ax.com> Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> wrote:
>> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
>> regarding tax information.
>
>> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
>> intentionally left blank" printed on them.
>
>> Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
>> means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."
>
> You can’t send out legal forms with blank pages as the assumption will
> be that a misprint occurred, so if a page is blank, you need to indicate
> that it is supposed to be blank and not indicative of an entire pages
> that is missing info.
>
> Similarly for tax documents, without that note, people would be unsure
> if they had the complete form with all the information they need.

Exams in the UK have that kind of page too (I can't remember whether
exams in the USA do).

> I do see this less than I used to, as it seems more forms are not forced
> into a specific pagination scheme, but when I do see it is it almost
> always on financial statements of some kind.
>
> You see a single document, but they are sending tens of thousands, if
> not more.
>

--
Oh what a time we had
Living on the ground
I've moved to Station Number 5
See you next time around

Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> wrote:

> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
> regarding tax information.
>
> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
> intentionally left blank" printed on them.
>
> Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
> means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."

So that's why the Russian police arrest people
who are demonstrating with really blank pages,

Jan

On Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 6:03:03 PM UTC-7, Sam Plusnet wrote:
> On 17-Mar-22 21:37, Tony Cooper wrote:
>
> > "Pundit" may mean "expert in field who is often called on to speak on
> > the subject", but common sense must not be among the qualifications
> > for the title.
> If a "pundit" can be relied upon to make some attention-grabbing
> remarks, the media company will keep them on speed dial.
>
Let's not stereotype the news people, please. As a print reporter, I thought
pundits were who the TV reporters called for a quick comment that could
be used without the reporters ever understanding what the pundit was
talking about. I used to try to find actual experts, and I'd keep them on the
line for 20 minutes, an hour, whatever, if they knew what they were talking
about and were willing to take the time.

I see I've stereotyped the TV reporters. I often felt sorry for them. They'd
have to cover four, six, eight stories a day without having enough time to
background even one of them properly. As a newspaper beat reporter, I
was usually able to work on stories I had plenty of background in, and the
electronic media people at news conferences would wait for the
print people to ask the first few questions to give them a sense of what
the story was about.

Those days are gone for the most part, unfortunately. Most newspaper
newsrooms now operate with a fraction of the number of reporters they
had in my day, and most of the reporters have to cover multiple stories in one
shift. At the Vancouver dailies, much of what in-depth reporting remains
is now done by the columnists, who are largely self-assigning.

bill

On 17/03/2022 19:54, Tony Cooper wrote:
> This time of year Americans are receiving mail from various firms
> regarding tax information.
>
> Today I received two that included pages with "This page was
> intentionally left blank" printed on them.
>
> Missing was the line that should say "Except for the above, which
> means the page isn't really blank, but you know what we mean."
>
>
> <This reply is intentionally left blank.>

On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 03:17:52 -0000 (UTC), wollman@bimajority.org
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:

>In article <3m973ht4rbtbsfjh4n2v3ma0ipl4mg05l4@4ax.com>,
>Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Tomorrow I may wonder why the Ukranian President's name is spelled
>>with one "y" in some reports and two "y"s in others.
>
>A common issue with names written in a non-Latin, but alphabetic,
>script: when you write them in English (or another language), do you
>transliterate them or transcribe them? A transcription would attempt
>to mimic or at least hint at the sound of the original; a
>transliteration is a character-by-character representation of the
>spelling.
>
>For Slavic languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet, these have been
>in tension for quite a while, with academics preferring a (reversible)
>transliteration, and popular writers historically using a phonetic
>respelling and lately something of a muddled transliteration (which
>isn't reversible but also doesn't give as much of a hint about
>pronunciation). So reporters used to write "Romanoff" and now write
>"Romanov"; lots of well-known Slavic names in <-off> are now <-ov> or
><-ev> depending on the original Cyrillic -- although of course brand
>names like "Smirnoff" haven't adopted this form.
>
>Of course phonetic respellings differ depending on the target
>language, which can be a problem for scholars or indeed multilingual
>news agencies and photo bureaus -- as witness the last Soviet
>president, Gorbachev, or Gorbatschow, or Gorbatchev, or Gorba?ëv, or
>Gorbachov, or Gorbatšov, or Gorbaczow.
>
>In the case of the man named "????????? ?????????????? ??????????" by his
>parents, and elected president as "????????? ?????????????
>??????????", as Wikipedia notes, official government documents like
>passports use the current official Ukrainian standard transliteration,
>which has it "Zelenskyy". Ukrainian uses both Cyrillic <?> and <?>,
>and it seems that they are transliterated as Latin <i> and <y>,

I guess that this explains the occasional "Zelenskiy" that I run
across. Both -sky and -skyy are much more prevalent in what I see.

>respectively, in the current standard. (Note that "Volodymyr" is the
>official transliteration of the Ukrainian reflex of Russian
>"Vladimir".) For Russian, <?> is usually transliterated as <i>.
>(Russian used to have the letter <?> but this was abolished in a
>spelling reform.)
>

--
Rich Ulrich