608: Form

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Form
'This space intentionally left blank' is less immediately provocative but more Hofstadterially confusing.
Title text: 'This space intentionally left blank' is less immediately provocative but more Hofstadterially confusing.

Explanation

Application forms, examination papers, etc. sometimes have one or more sections with instructions not to write in them, as those areas are intended for those processing the paper (which includes the infamous phrases "for office use only", replacing "office" with "administrative" or "internal" in some cases).

Some people feel the need to write in the illegal section just to contradict the instructions, as does Cueball in the comic. In real life there are never usually any consequences for breaking this rule. However, in the comic, the form that Cueball wrote on was being filmed by armed men who respond to Cueball's disregard for rules by preparing their guns, thus presenting a potentially serious consequence for Cueball.

The title text refers to Douglas Hofstadter, an author associated with the philosophical concept of self-reference. "This space intentionally left blank" is "Hofstadterially confusing" because if a space on a form contains the words "This space intentionally left blank", then the space is not, in fact, left blank. (Douglas Hofstadter is also the subject of 917: Hofstadter.)

Transcript

[There is a sheet of paper, with a series of check boxes. A white rectangle is the focus.]
Do not write in this space.
[Cueball is standing with a pencil, looking at the page.]
[Cueball writes something on the page.]
[A group of people with helmets, black goggles, and rifles look at display screens. There is a radar system on a table between them.]
[The screens show sheets of paper. On one screen, it shows Cueball writing on one.]
[One of the men arms his weapon.]
Cha-click


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Discussion

This space intentionally left without relevant content. Cflare (talk) 21:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

No Comment!

I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 09:17, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

The quote in the title refers to the phrase 'This page intentionally left blank' used in old IBM manuals. Large systems came with a manual rack nearly 2 meters long. The manuals had to be updated now and then when IBM sent 'change pages' to replace pages describing things that had been updated. Sometimes the change pages had less text than the pages they were replacing, so the page number sequence would appear to have a page missing. To avoid confusion, a blank page containing the above rubric would be provided. 108.162.241.123 20:44, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

“This page intentionally left blank is not unique to IBM manuals. I have encountered it several times in standardized tests in schools. However your comment was helpful in clarifying the purpose, I hadn’t thought about the fact that the tests would often have the teacher say “turn to page 37” and similar, and would need to accommodate the fact that there were multiple different versions of the test with varying content, hence potentially varying length too. Thus the included “blank pages” to result in consistent numbers. PotatoGod (talk) 02:52, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

In some cases (like scantron forms), a space is left blank because a light will be shined through the paper to read the responses (typically filled-in circles) on the other side, so any writing on the visible side might be erroneously read as a response on the other side. 172.70.38.151 13:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)