Hidden signatures
~ a check is required in this case
~ some are slightly out of alignment
A book is made of numerous gatherings of paper known as sections. For printed matter the bookbinder must keep these in order. To help in this task each section is marked in a way such that the order of the sections becomes clear. The designer and typesetter insert small codes into each section make collating them easier than reading trough the text at the endings and beginnings of pages. These marks are called signatures.
Some signatures ~ in small and inconspicuous print ~ appear on the first page of a section. In latter days these were usually letters of the alphabet placed below the text in the bottom margin. Nowadays ~ with the advent of much more precision machinery they are more commonly hidden out of sight, as on the spine ~ illustrated below. They disappear on binding but are fully visible once collation is complete.
