To: National Geographic Society Forum
Fr: William Li
Re: Regarding the pagination of National Geographic

Dear Editors (especially the ones responsible for layout)

What is the deal with page numbering? I mean, why do you even bother to put the page numbers in the table of contents?

In the most recent issue that I received, the so-called “page 1” started on about the 50th page of the magazine; seriously. This wouldn’t be so bad if the pagination was at least consistent from page 1 onward. No way. Sometimes fold-out pages count as two pages, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes pages with articles have page numbers, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes advertisement pages count as magazine pages, sometimes they don’t. Most aggravating of all is that there is no rhyme or reason for it.

Actually there is a rhyme for it; as follows:

The National Geographic staff paginates capriciously.
So if you want an article about the deep blue sea,
Open to the middle and then flip around
If you are lucky, the article will be found.

The whole issue makes reading your magazine very discommodious, if you know what I mean.

Sincerely,

William Li
Sugar Land, TX