On Sat, 9 Feb 2008, Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Saturday 09 February 2008 04:35:35 Daniel Barkalow wrote:
> >
> >
> >> *This .sig left intentionally blank*
> >>
> >
> > It did? Where did it leave for?
> >
> >
>
> That reminds me of the pages in the IBM service manuals. They would put
> that on the "blank" pages. My questions was always this: If it has
> that on it, is it blank? :/
In fact, my .sig is entirely blank. I just always type the same thing by
hand after writing every email, and have been doing so for long enough to
forget if there was actually a good reason to do so originally. There may
have also been a good reason I didn't make it "*This .sig intentionally
left blank*", which would match the word order of the IBM manuals (and the
door in Zork).
The IBM manuals actually had a good reason. I think it was that they were
in loose-leaf binders so they could mail people new versions of individual
chapters, and each chapter was therefore on pieces of paper that weren't
shared with any other chapter (this also required page numbers like 6-15).
This meant that if a chapter ended on a right-hand page, the other side of
the paper couldn't have anything on it. But if it were actually blank,
people would worry that it was a misprint (if two sheets stuck together in
the printer and then came unstuck before shipping, this could happen). So
they wanted to print something innocuous on that side.
-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*
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