Signature mark
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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The practice has been superseded by advances in printing and bookbinding technology.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 Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.REFERENCE MARK was re-encoded with Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+203B ※ Script error: No such module "Unicode data". (Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.Script error: No such module "LoadData".)
- 0x34 Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.MALTESE CROSS, with Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+2720 ✠ Script error: No such module "Unicode data". (Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.Script error: No such module "LoadData".)
- 0x36 Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.RIGHTWARDS LEAF ARROW, with Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+2767 ❧ Script error: No such module "Unicode data". (Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.Script error: No such module "LoadData".) (also known as "hedera" and "ivy leaf")
- 0x37 Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SIDEWAYS Q, with Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+213A ℺ Script error: No such module "Unicode data". (Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.Script error: No such module "LoadData".)[5]
Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+2619 ☙ Script error: No such module "Unicode data". (Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.Script error: No such module "LoadData".) 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
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- ^ "General Comments about Signature Marks" in Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4". Unicode – The World Standard for Text and Emoji. 1998-08-19. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
- ^ "signature mark" on Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Roberts, Matt T.; Etherington, Don. "Bookbinding and the Conservation of books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology".
- ^ 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
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Everson, Michael (1998-05-25). "Additional signature mark characters for the UCS" (PDF). Unicode – The World Standard for Text and Emoji. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Michael S. Kaplan (10 January 2005). "Every character has a story #1: U+213a (ROTATED CAPITAL Q)". Sorting it all Out, v2. Archived from the original on 9 September 2006. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
