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My former publications department ended up having to do this because we
worked with some extremely neurotic SMEs and clients. This was an
environmental engineering firm doing work for the EPA and corporations
like Boeing.
Most of our work involved producing reports from our
engineers/scientists to the clients. Our SMEs would get extremely
uptight about any perceived errors in the reports (going out with their
name on it), and the client SMEs--generally scientists who had to report
to the company's management--were also very prickly about any
typographical errors.
And there were errors all the time. Keep in mind that we never had
enough time, were often handling 2K-3K page reports, might have 10 or
more rounds of reviews in a final week, and there weren't enough of us.
Also, I swear, we had an incredibly capricious copier that would drop a
page for no apparent reason. (OK--enough self-justification.)
The result was that our more "highly-strung" scientists would see a
blank page and absolutely freak. Even worse, a client SME would see it
and freak--over the phone to our SME--who would of course pass on the
favor to us.
The phrase "this page intentionally left blank" was self-preservation,
pure and simple.
