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<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">Formatting present: best read in html or RTF
<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">Dear colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">Jason LeMay, an alumnus of this year's RBS Rare Book Cataloging course, sent me a query about recording the signature mark
<b>):( </b> With his permission, I'm reposting it and a version of my response below for discussion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">I am finally trying to put my Rare Book Cataloging into action. I’ve come across an odd little pamphlet I had previously dealt with, and now I’m preparing to review and enhance
my previous cataloging. The entire item is a single gathering of four leaves, and they are signed “):(“, “):(2”, and “):(3” (fourth leaf unsigned).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">For the signature, would I actually record ):(<sup>4</sup>?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">DJL: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">Jason, yes, you’ve got it right. Since our character set has parentheses and a colon, you can use them to represent the signature mark.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">The difficulty comes when you need to qualify signatures. Parentheses are used to introduce the qualifications, but when the signature mark also has parentheses, the resulting
statement can be almost impossible to parse. Let’s imagine that the gathering in your book wasn’t regular and needed to be qualified. Say, that the gathering only has three leaves, you’ve ascertained that the fourth leaf isn’t present, and that your 3-leaf
gathering represents a perfect copy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Signatures: ):(<sup>4</sup>(-):(4) A-Z<sup>8</sup>.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">I’ve resorted to a couple of different ways to ameliorate the situation. One is to use square brackets and an extra space instead of parentheses for qualification. So:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Signatures: ):(<sup>4</sup> [-):(4] A-Z<sup>8</sup>.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">Which is still enough to make one’s eyes cross. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">What do you, the community, think about this use of a descriptive phrase in the following signature statement for an actual book.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Signatures: [inverted parentheses]-3[inverted parentheses]<sup>4</sup> 4[inverted parentheses]<sup>4</sup> (-[inverted parentheses]4) A-C<sup>4</sup> D<sup>4</sup> (±D1) E<sup>4</sup> F<sup>4</sup> (±F1) G-3H<sup>4</sup>
3I<sup>4</sup> (-3I4).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif"">This book is signed with
<b>)(</b> instead of<b> ):(</b>, so "inverted parentheses" is accurate. For the latter, one possible remedy I just thought of was to pick a single character to represent the ):( and explain it. Something like <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Signatures: %-3%<sup>4</sup> 4%<sup>4</sup>(-%4) A-C<sup>4</sup> D<sup>4</sup> (±D1) E<sup>4</sup> F<sup>4</sup> (±F1) G-3H<sup>4</sup> 3I<sup>4</sup>(-3I4); preliminaries are actually signed ):(.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";color:#31849B">Deborah J. Leslie | Folger Shakespeare Library | djleslie@folger.edu | 202.675-0369 | 201 East Capitol St., SE, Washington, DC 20003 | www. folger.edu<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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