There is something I don’t understand and I’m hoping someone can explain it to me. I guess you could call this complaining, or maybe it is just this compulsion I have to make the world a perfect place when it comes to all the little things in life. I recognize I don’t have any influence on the big things and have relegated myself to working on the small stuff and letting the important people take care of the big stuff.
But I digress. I had started to talk about one of those little, annoying things we seem to run into in this world that defy reason, briefly annoy us, and then we move on with absolutely no progress being made to correct the offending action.
Ok, so what am I talking about? It’s magazines, or more specifically magazine page numbers. What could possibly be wrong with magazine page numbers you ask? Ok, take a typical magazine, just about any magazine, and look at the contents in the front of the magazine. Wait, let me digress for just a brief moment here to talk about something else that bothers me. Question: were you actually able to locate the contents of the magazine? In a great number of magazines I read, the contents are cleverly hidden after several pages of ads in the front and then the contents are spread out in such a way as to allow even more ads to intersperse into the contents. It becomes a chore just to find and read the contents.
Ok, that digression is over and we will move on. Let’s say you have succeeded in locating the contents with all the promise of fascinating articles with Pulitzer Prize level of journalism. You wade through the contents and actually locate the article you want to read and, sure enough, the table of contents dutifully lists the page number in the magazine where the article appears.
But wait, before we proceed, there is one other thing we need to discuss. One other minor item regarding magazines and the table of contents. Have you ever picked up a magazine, looked at the cover, and became interested in the cover article, only to turn to the table of contents to locate the article in the magazine, only to find the article was missing, or cleverly hidden under a totally different or unrelated name than the one listed on the cover? I would like that one explained to me also.
Ok, let’s get back to the original rant if we can only remember where we were. (Actually, I’m the one who has to remember. If you are reading this, all you have to do is start at the beginning and refresh your memory. If you get to this point in the article a second time, just skip this section and move on because you are caught in an endless “writer’s” loop.) We had located the article we were interested in reading in the table of contents and checked the contents listing for the page number of the article. Then we turn to the listed page and read the article. But…….where is the page? I mean the article is supposed to begin on page 37, and we try to turn to page 37, but there doesn’t seem to be a “page number 37”!! Oh, there is probably a 37th page no doubt and it is physically located after the 36th page in the magazine, but there is no actual page number on the 37th page nor is there an actual page number 36 to help guide us. In fact, better than half the pages don’t have page numbers on them so we are left to find a page number somewhere in the magazine, totally unrelated to our chosen article, and then begin the arduous process of counting the subsequent pages until we reach our destination. Why can’t they simply number ALL the pages? Is ink that expensive that they can’t afford to print the page numbers? I don’t think so. It is just simple laziness on the part of whoever does the page layout. I realize it has to get really boring typing in all those consecutive numbers. Either that or there is a more personal aim here and the guy just wants to annoy all of the readers of the magazine.
My problems are two: first, am I the only one who notices this or is bothered by it? I certainly hope not or I’m going to feel really lonely out here, blathering endlessly about what every other person in the world either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t consider to be a problem. And second: what can be done about it? Are there enough of you OCD types out there who really care about problems like this or am I left standing here, all alone to fight the good fight, to right all the wrongs of the world, at least all the ones small enough for me to be concerned with.
But I digress. I had started to talk about one of those little, annoying things we seem to run into in this world that defy reason, briefly annoy us, and then we move on with absolutely no progress being made to correct the offending action.
Ok, so what am I talking about? It’s magazines, or more specifically magazine page numbers. What could possibly be wrong with magazine page numbers you ask? Ok, take a typical magazine, just about any magazine, and look at the contents in the front of the magazine. Wait, let me digress for just a brief moment here to talk about something else that bothers me. Question: were you actually able to locate the contents of the magazine? In a great number of magazines I read, the contents are cleverly hidden after several pages of ads in the front and then the contents are spread out in such a way as to allow even more ads to intersperse into the contents. It becomes a chore just to find and read the contents.
Ok, that digression is over and we will move on. Let’s say you have succeeded in locating the contents with all the promise of fascinating articles with Pulitzer Prize level of journalism. You wade through the contents and actually locate the article you want to read and, sure enough, the table of contents dutifully lists the page number in the magazine where the article appears.
But wait, before we proceed, there is one other thing we need to discuss. One other minor item regarding magazines and the table of contents. Have you ever picked up a magazine, looked at the cover, and became interested in the cover article, only to turn to the table of contents to locate the article in the magazine, only to find the article was missing, or cleverly hidden under a totally different or unrelated name than the one listed on the cover? I would like that one explained to me also.
Ok, let’s get back to the original rant if we can only remember where we were. (Actually, I’m the one who has to remember. If you are reading this, all you have to do is start at the beginning and refresh your memory. If you get to this point in the article a second time, just skip this section and move on because you are caught in an endless “writer’s” loop.) We had located the article we were interested in reading in the table of contents and checked the contents listing for the page number of the article. Then we turn to the listed page and read the article. But…….where is the page? I mean the article is supposed to begin on page 37, and we try to turn to page 37, but there doesn’t seem to be a “page number 37”!! Oh, there is probably a 37th page no doubt and it is physically located after the 36th page in the magazine, but there is no actual page number on the 37th page nor is there an actual page number 36 to help guide us. In fact, better than half the pages don’t have page numbers on them so we are left to find a page number somewhere in the magazine, totally unrelated to our chosen article, and then begin the arduous process of counting the subsequent pages until we reach our destination. Why can’t they simply number ALL the pages? Is ink that expensive that they can’t afford to print the page numbers? I don’t think so. It is just simple laziness on the part of whoever does the page layout. I realize it has to get really boring typing in all those consecutive numbers. Either that or there is a more personal aim here and the guy just wants to annoy all of the readers of the magazine.
My problems are two: first, am I the only one who notices this or is bothered by it? I certainly hope not or I’m going to feel really lonely out here, blathering endlessly about what every other person in the world either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t consider to be a problem. And second: what can be done about it? Are there enough of you OCD types out there who really care about problems like this or am I left standing here, all alone to fight the good fight, to right all the wrongs of the world, at least all the ones small enough for me to be concerned with.
3 comments:
I thought that I was the only one! All I want to know is how to get flat abs and I can never find the right page. I guess that's why I don't have flat abs! I hate magazine page numbers. And then when you find one that has them done correctly you don't know what to do.
So FIL- what's the solution? I love my magazines way to much to give them up- They tell me that I can run a perfect marathon everytime and yet I still haven't accomplished that all because I haven't found that stupid page... Do you think it is a conspiracy against the intelligent people of the world to keep on buying magazines and trying to crack the code of the page number/table of contents?hmmmmmmm...
DIL, maybe that will be our campaign slogan!!!
Amy, nice to know I'm not alone in this!
:0
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