Pretentious Pagination

ESOTERICA

I'm amused by Business Week's habit of marking all of its pages with three digits. Thus page 18 becomes page 018.

Now this might be appropriate if the magazine weren't but a shadow of its former self. I can remember decades ago when my father got the magazine, and it frequently exceeded two hundred pages; these days it rarely hits eighty. Thus, the first digit is at best superfluous and at least ridiculous.

Like newspapers, it's clear that Business Week—and many other magazines; has anyone seen the puny journal that Sports Illustrated has become?—is struggling. Expending extra money for the ink to place gratuitous zeroes on its pages can't be helping matters.