Signature mark
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "about".
A signature mark, in traditional bookbinding, is a letter, number or combination of either or both, which is printed at the bottom of the first page, or leaf, of a section.
The section is itself referred to as a signature, also called collation or gathering.[1]
The aim is to ensure that the binder can order the pages and sections in the correct order. Often the letters of the Latin alphabet were used.
The practice has been superseded by advances in printing and bookbinding technology. As a result, signature marks are rarely found in modern books.[2]
Contemporary use of signature marks
A number of symbols traditionally used as binding signature marks were encoded in ISO 5426-2[3] and from there (to enable migration of data from the old standard) were transposed into Unicode.[4]
- 0x32 Template:Sc2 was re-encoded with Template:Unichar
- 0x34 Template:Sc2, with Template:Unichar
- 0x36 Template:Sc2, with Template:Unichar (also known as "hedera" and "ivy leaf")
- 0x37 Template:Sc2, with Template:Unichar[5]
Template:Unichar was added later. These latter two are the only codepoints in Unicode 4.0 to bear the annotation "binding signature mark".
See also
- Template:Annotated link (class of symbols that includes the floral heart bullets mentioned above.
- Template:Annotated link
References
fr:Signature#Signature de la feuille
- ↑ "General Comments about Signature Marks" in Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ "signature mark" on Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ 1996, Information and documentation -- Extension of the Latin alphabet coded character set for bibliographic information interchange -- Part 2: Latin characters used in minor European languages and obsolete typography
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".