I have a scrbook document with an openright option, i.e. every once in a while a blank left page appears in the document. Not that I really want to do this, but how could I include the infamous "This page has been intentionally left blank" in those blank pages cleanly, i.e. without too many hacks? Bonus points for including a different famous quote on each blank page instead of the dull default ;)
asked Aug 15, 2010 at 0:06 Nikolai Prokoschenko Nikolai Prokoschenko 1,733 2 2 gold badges 14 14 silver badges 11 11 bronze badges Well this is like the paradox of the liar from Crete. :) Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 13:03 To avoid the paradox, use "This page is intentionally printed only with this statement." Commented Jun 27, 2012 at 18:22I am using "This page is filler so that important sections start on the right hand side of the book."
Commented May 13, 2014 at 16:14 Another correct avoidance of the paradox: This page is unintentionally left not blank. Commented Nov 11, 2017 at 1:18Late to the party, but: I've never understood what's wrong with: "This page intentionally not left blank." That's precisely what it is; you could have left it blank, but intentionally you wrote something to avoid so.
Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 12:57You could redefine \cleardoublepage . Here's an example:
\documentclass[openright] \newcommand* \vspace> \makeatletter \renewcommand* <\clearpage\if@twoside \ifodd\c@page\else \blankpage \thispagestyle\newpage \if@twocolumn\hbox<>\newpage\fi\fi\fi> \makeatother \begin Text \chapter \end
\blankpage just prints what you like, both vertically and horizontally centered.
51.7k 13 13 gold badges 159 159 silver badges 269 269 bronze badges answered Aug 15, 2010 at 0:56 Stefan Kottwitz ♦ Stefan Kottwitz 234k 84 84 gold badges 676 676 silver badges 829 829 bronze badgesI guess the downside of this is that if \cleardoublepage changes at upgrade time, evil things could happen. Oh well, this is TeX, I don't expect much in terms of inheritance ;)
Commented Aug 15, 2010 at 1:46KOMA-Script and so scrbook define 14 such commands, from \clearpage to \cleardoubleevenstandardpage , so it could be further customized. ;)
Commented Aug 15, 2010 at 1:51This works well for \mainmatter, but not for \frontmatter and \backmatter. Is there any tweak to do that for the whole document?
Commented Oct 6, 2014 at 7:34I am using the book style. This works well for the last pages of each chapter. But I don't see such sentence appearing right after the \part pages in which we normally have nothing printed.
Commented Nov 9, 2014 at 15:40@EnthusiasticStudent Perhaps it doesn't use \cleardoublepage which has been redefined here. So you could hook into another macro at that place.
Commented Nov 9, 2014 at 20:24memoir has \cleartooddpage (and \cleartoevenpage ) which do just this. Paraphrased from the manual:
A likely example for the optional argument is
\cleartooddpage[\vspace* THIS PAGE ACCIDENTALLY PRINTED ON \vspace*] which will put ‘THIS PAGE ACCIDENTALLY PRINTED ON’ in the centre of any potential skipped (empty) even numbered page.
252k 70 70 gold badges 730 730 silver badges 796 796 bronze badges answered Aug 15, 2010 at 7:54 Brent.Longborough Brent.Longborough 28.2k 10 10 gold badges 89 89 silver badges 141 141 bronze badgesI haven't seen an answer that handles correct centering in both horizontal and vertical direction. For analysis the answer of Stefan Kottwitz is taken:
% Set parameters for analyzing/debugging \showboxdepth=\maxdimen \showboxbreadth=\maxdimen \tracingonline=1 \documentclass[openright] \newcommand* \centering This page would be intentionally left blank if we would not wish to inform about that. \vspace% \showlists > \makeatletter \renewcommand* \newpage \if@twocolumn \hbox<>\newpage \fi \fi \fi > \makeatother \begin Text \chapter \end
\showlists stops the TeX run and displays the current vertical list. This is written into the .log file and, if \tracingonline is set to a positive number, it is also printed on the terminal.
Excerpt from the .log file:
### vertical mode entered at line 0 ### current page: \write-<> \glue(\topskip) 11.0 \rule(0.0+0.0)x* \penalty 10000 \glue 0.0 plus 1.0fill \glue 0.0 \glue(\parskip) 0.0 plus 1.0 \glue(\baselineskip) 5.99585 \hbox(7.60416+2.12917)x418.25555, glue set - 0.1209 .\glue(\leftskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil .\hbox(0.0+0.0)x0.0 .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 T .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 h .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 i .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 s .\glue 3.65 plus 1.825 minus 1.21666 .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 p .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 a .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 g .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 e . .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 t .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 h .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 a .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 t .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 . .\glue 4.86665 plus 5.47499 minus 0.40555 .\penalty 10000 .\glue(\parfillskip) 0.0 .\glue(\rightskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil \glue 0.0 plus 1.0fill \glue 0.0 total height 26.72917 plus 1.0 plus 2.0fill goal height 595.80026 prevdepth 2.12917, prevgraf 1 line ! OK. The \hbox with the text starts with:
\hbox(7.60416+2.12917)x418.25555, glue set - 0.1209 .\glue(\leftskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil .\hbox(0.0+0.0)x0.0 .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 T That means the left space is 0pt plus 1fil . \leftskip is set by \centering and the stretch component plus 1.0fil is needed for centering.
The box ends with:
.\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 t .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 . .\glue 4.86665 plus 5.47499 minus 0.40555 .\penalty 10000 .\glue(\parfillskip) 0.0 .\glue(\rightskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil Again the stretch component plus 1.0fil of \rightskip comes from \centering and is needed for centering. But there is a glue after the final dot:
.\glue 4.86665 plus 5.47499 minus 0.40555 That means there is extra white space at the end of the line. It comes from the space after the final dot before \vspace :
. that. \vspace
The paragraph has not yet ended, when \vspace is called. Therefore the space is not added directly, but via \vadjust . The following paragraph end usually removes the latest whitespace, thus that the latest line or white space before an emtpy line or \par does not need to be removed. However, the space before \vadjust is not seen by the paragraph end and appears in the output. This can be fixed by explicitely ending the paragraph:
. that.\par \vspace
The bottom end looks fine:
\glue 0.0 plus 1.0fill \glue 0.0 Just the fill component is present. But at the upper part we can find some additional contributions to the vertical space:
\glue(\topskip) 11.0 \rule(0.0+0.0)x* \penalty 10000 \glue 0.0 plus 1.0fill \glue 0.0 \glue(\parskip) 0.0 plus 1.0 \glue(\baselineskip) 5.99585 1. Full `\topskip` is inserted at the top of a page because of the following invisible rule, added by the star form `\vspace*`. Setting it to `0pt` locally fixes this. 2. When a new paragraph starts `\parskip` is added that might have larger values than shown here. Because we have just one paragraph here, setting it to zero is the easiest way. 3. The value for `\baselineskip` comes from the line breaking algorithm. The value is calculated from the setting of `\baselineskip` (`13.6pt`) minus the height of the line (`7.6pt`). This can be suppressed by `\nointerlineskip`. New definition of \blankpage :
\newcommand*% \setlength<\parskip>% \vspace*% \centering \nointerlineskip % suppresses partial \baselineskip above text This page would be intentionally left blank if we would not wish to inform about that.\par \vspace% \endgroup % \showlists > Excerpt from the .log file with \showlists for new \blankpage :
### vertical mode entered at line 0 ### current page: \write-<> \glue(\topskip) 0.0 \rule(0.0+0.0)x* \penalty 10000 \glue 0.0 plus 1.0fill \glue 0.0 \glue(\parskip) 0.0 \hbox(7.60416+2.12917)x418.25555, glue set 1.30571fil .\glue(\leftskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil .\hbox(0.0+0.0)x0.0 .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 T .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 h .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 i .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 s .\glue 3.65 plus 1.825 minus 1.21666 .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 p .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 a .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 g .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 e . .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 t .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 h .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 a .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 t .\OT1/cmr/m/n/10.95 . .\penalty 10000 .\glue(\parfillskip) 0.0 .\glue(\rightskip) 0.0 plus 1.0fil total height 7.60416 plus 1.0fill goal height 595.80026 ### recent contributions: \glue 0.0 plus 1.0fill \glue 0.0 prevdepth 2.12917, prevgraf 1 line ! OK. With a small modification \blankpage will also work with twocolumn , when the text is put in the left column, but should be centered in the whole text area:
\newcommand*% \vspace*% \nointerlineskip % suppresses partial \baselineskip above text \hbox to \linewidth% \hss >% \vspace% \endgroup % \showlists >