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{{Short description|Mark identifying a section in bookbinding}}
{{about|marks used in bookbinding|a mark made in lieu of signature|Signature#Signature (mark)}} 
[[Image:Kvennafræðarinn,p49.png|thumb|150px|right|At the bottom of page 49, the signature mark "3" represents the number of the gathering.]]
A '''signature mark''', in traditional [[Engineering:Bookbinding|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.<ref>"General Comments about Signature Marks" in {{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L1998/98292.htm |title=Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4 |author= |date=1998-08-19 |website=Unicode – The World Standard for Text and Emoji |access-date=2024-08-06}}</ref>

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The practice has been superseded by advances in printing and bookbinding technology.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.<ref>"signature mark" on {{cite web |url=http://cool.conservation-us.org/don/dt/dt3111.html |title=Bookbinding and the Conservation of books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology |last=Roberts |first=Matt T. |last2=Etherington |first2=Don |date= |website= }}</ref>

==Contemporary use of signature marks==
A number of symbols traditionally used as binding signature marks were encoded in [[ISO 5426|ISO 5426-2]]<ref>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</ref> and from there (to enable migration of data from the old standard) were transposed into [[Unicode]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L1998/98215-n1748.pdf |title=Additional signature mark characters for the UCS |last=Everson |first=Michael |date=1998-05-25 |website=Unicode – The World Standard for Text and Emoji |access-date=2024-08-06}}</ref>

* 0x32 {{sc2|REFERENCE MARK}} was re-encoded with {{unichar|203B|Reference mark|nlink=Reference mark|html=}}
* 0x34 {{sc2|MALTESE CROSS}}, with {{unichar|2720|Maltese cross|nlink=Maltese cross|html=}}
* 0x36 {{sc2|RIGHTWARDS LEAF ARROW}}, with {{unichar|2767|ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET|nlink=Fleuron (typography)|html=}} (also known as "hedera" and "ivy leaf")
* 0x37 {{sc2|LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SIDEWAYS Q}}, with {{unichar|213A|ROTATED CAPITAL Q|nlink=Q#Derived_signs,_symbols_and_abbreviations|html=}}<ref name=kaplan>{{ cite web |author=Michael S. Kaplan |date=10 January 2005 |title=Every character has a story #1: U+213a (ROTATED CAPITAL Q) |work=Sorting it all Out, v2 |url=http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/01/10/349769.aspx |accessdate=21 October 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060909235709/http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/01/10/349769.aspx |archive-date=9 September 2006}}</ref>

{{unichar|2619|REVERSED ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET|nlink=Fleuron_(typography)#Unicode|html=}} was added later. These latter two are the only codepoints in Unicode 4.0 to bear the annotation "''binding signature mark''".

==See also==
<!--This article is about bookbinding, not about legal instruments -->
* {{Annotated link |Fleuron (typography)}} (class of symbols that includes the floral heart bullets mentioned above.
* {{Annotated link |Signature}}

==References==

{{reflist}}

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[[Category:Identifiers]]

fr:Signature#Signature de la feuille

{{Sourceattribution|Signature mark}}