What ℺ means
It marked folded groups of pages for binding.
In book production, a “signature” is a folded gathering of pages, not an author's autograph. This sideways Q gave the binder a cue for identifying a gathering as the book was assembled.
ISO 5426-2 grouped it with a reference mark, a Maltese cross and a rotated floral-heart bullet—a small set of old printing marks, not alternate shapes of ℺. Unicode retains ℺ as its own character so older bibliographic text can preserve this mark.
An archival book-production mark, not a general-purpose letter.
A blank box usually means the active font lacks this glyph; another font may display it.
Questions people ask
1Why does ℺ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
11
How to type or find ℺
- Search it as
- sideways q · turned q mark · binding signature mark · bookbinding mark · old printing mark · ISO 5426-2
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.