SIGNATURE

(Lat. sig natura.) In Music, the flats and sharps placed after the clef, at the beginning of the staff, which affect, throughout the movement, all notes of the same letter. Signature. In Printing, a letter of the alphabet placed at the bottom of the first page of each sheet of a work, to denote, alphabetically, the order of the sheets. It is customary to commence with B on the first sheet of the body of the work, and to go regularly through the alphabet, with the exception of the letters J, V, and W, which are never used as signatures; and which hail, in fact, no existence in the alphabet at the time of the invention of printing; $> expre ed both J and J; 2S, both U and V; 23231, the double letter W. If the work extend to more sheets in number than there are letters in the alphabet, the succeeding sheets go on with a second alpha bet, which commences with A, and both the letters are usually given; in this manner, A A, or A a, and sometimes, to avoid the repetition, thus, 2 A. If a third alphabet be nece ary, it is always, at the present day, placed with the number before it, as 3 A. The printer's first alphabet con sists 3f twenty-two letters, and the second and succeeding ones of twenty-three. As a guide to the bookbinder, there are other signatures used in a sheet besides the first. In a sheet of octavo the first page has B, the third has B2, the fifth has B3, and the seventh has B 4: in a sheet of twelves they are carried to B 6, B 5 being the first page of the offcut; and however numerous the pages may be in a sheet with one signature, when they are all inserted, they are continued to the last odd page before the middle of the sheet, but never carried beyond the middle. In general they are all omitted except the two first, to show the first fold of the paper, and the first on the offcut. Small capitals are more frequently used for signatures than large capitals, as disfiguring the foot of the page in a slighter manner. Sometimes figures are used instead of letters, but not often; the Gentleman's Magazine is an instance. (Savage's Vict, of Printing.) SIGNET, [s. 1138]