A signature mark, in traditional
bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, b ...
, 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 often known as a "signature", although technically this usage is incorrect.) 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 have been used. The practice has been overtaken by advances in printing technology, and signature marks are rarely found in modern books.
Contemporary use of signature marks
A number of symbols traditionally used as binding signature marks were encoded in
ISO 5426-2
ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization.
ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance
* Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007
* Is ...
[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] and from there (to enable migration of data from the old standard) were transposed into
Unicode.
* 0x32 was re-encoded with
* 0x34 , with
* 0x36 , with (also known as "hedera" and "ivy leaf")
* 0x37 , with
was added later. These latter two are the only
codepoints in Unicode 4.0 to bear the annotation "''binding signature mark''".
See also
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Signature Mark
Page layout
fr:Signature#Signature de la feuille