This page is intentionally left blank: Difference between revisions
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Ok, no - I’m started. Of all the pointless things a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page - and [[I]] hope anyone reading these pages will be persuaded there are many - none is quite so ill-conceived as [[This page is intentionally left blank]]. | Ok, no - I’m started. Of all the pointless things a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page - and [[I]] hope anyone reading these pages will be persuaded there are many - none is quite so ill-conceived as [[This page is intentionally left blank]]. | ||
I suppose it is meant to differentiate a wantonly blank page from | I suppose it is meant to differentiate a wantonly blank page from those whose emptiness is a product of a weaker mental conviction on the author's part (recklessness<ref>in that the author apprehended the risk the page world be bare and took it anyway.</ref>or negligence<ref>in that a reasonable person in the author's position would have realised there was a risk the page would be blank</ref>as to emptiness) and those which got that way through no cognitive machination (actual or constructive) on the author's part at all. | ||
But - as is so often the case - this arcane debate obscures a deeper question: what does it matter? Like the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn't there, the semantic content of an empty page is precisely nothing. It is neither action not omission but a formless void, inert without the divine breath of a creator. It is not even the dog that didn't bark in the night time. It isn't night: it isn't time. Your sin of omission in not saying this, or that, is not encapsulated in the four corners of an empty page where you didn't say it: it is universal: it lives on every page, however densely entexted, on which you didn't say it: in every breath of air that escaped your lungs on which that utterance did not pass. | |||
{{plainenglish}} | {{plainenglish}} | ||
Revision as of 08:50, 17 December 2016
Don't get me started.
Ok, no - I’m started. Of all the pointless things a legal eagle can commit to a page - and I hope anyone reading these pages will be persuaded there are many - none is quite so ill-conceived as This page is intentionally left blank.
I suppose it is meant to differentiate a wantonly blank page from those whose emptiness is a product of a weaker mental conviction on the author's part (recklessness[1]or negligence[2]as to emptiness) and those which got that way through no cognitive machination (actual or constructive) on the author's part at all.
But - as is so often the case - this arcane debate obscures a deeper question: what does it matter? Like the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn't there, the semantic content of an empty page is precisely nothing. It is neither action not omission but a formless void, inert without the divine breath of a creator. It is not even the dog that didn't bark in the night time. It isn't night: it isn't time. Your sin of omission in not saying this, or that, is not encapsulated in the four corners of an empty page where you didn't say it: it is universal: it lives on every page, however densely entexted, on which you didn't say it: in every breath of air that escaped your lungs on which that utterance did not pass.
Plain English Anatomy™ Noun | Verb | Adjective | Adverb | Preposition | Conjunction | Latin | Germany | Flannel | Legal triplicate | Nominalisation | Murder your darlings