50+ Finds with Unknown Purposes until The Internet Came to the Rescue

You’ve probably seen these before when leafing through old books. We know we have, but we were never curious enough to wonder what their purpose was. We’re referring to the letters found at the bottom of the page. They’re usually letters or symbols, but they can be a combination of the two.

These are what’s known as signature marks. Old printing presses relied on signature marks to know in what order to place the pages. Modern-day printing has made signature marks pretty much obsolete for obvious reasons. Nowadays, you’ll hardly find paperback novels with these iconic marks at the bottom of every leaf (one side of a page).