I hadn't heard the term oxymoron until I'd been at IBM for a few years. We had a colloquialism in my family that was used in the same way oxymoron was. The colloquialism was, "a self contradiction," which I haven't heard anyone use in years.
As an information development coordinator for the VM operating system I was exposed to the reason for the blank page and had to answer reader comment forms that were sent in on some very sincere issues and some that were just silly. I was teasing about the blank page because of someone's early comment about, "call your system programmer." I remember the first time a friend explained to me that I was the system programmer and had to figure things out. I had some friends who were very tolerant and kind early on in my career when I was chagrined at the comment, "call your systems progammer." -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of john gilmore Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 9:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: pages marked as blank in IBM manuals Ted MacNeil writes: > >We used to call that "The IBM oxymoron". > >A page stating it's blank, by definition cannot be blank. > This practice was defensive. IBM received too many, many too many, requests to replace these putatively defective blank pages. Bright-eyed readers apparently judged that they might be missing something important. It is almost certainly too late to recover the legitimate use of 'oxymoron' here; but it is perhaps worth noting that its original and still its only legitimate use is as a rhetorical figure that states an apparent contradition and then shows that it is in fact no such thing. Use of 'oxymoron' in this sense has a long history, extending from the Alexandrian rhetoricians forward through Milton, Voltaire, Burke, and I. A. Richards. The cute folk etymology that relates 'oxymoron' to 'moron' has less weight, and it of course marks its users as uninformed. John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721 USA _________________________________________________________________ Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
