I noticed that the Moleskine I’m currently using seemed not to open quite as flat as my previous one. Closer inspection led me to discover that this notebook has only 8 signatures of pages, and the old one had 12. When I looked through various other Moleskines in my collection, I found a mix– most had 8, but a few had 12, with no seeming rhyme or reason to it. Some of the 8s were old Kikkerland-distributed Moleskines, and some were more recent ones without the Modo & Modo name on them.
How many signatures do your Moleskines have?
What is a signature?
In bookbinding, a signature is a group of leaves, sewn together, and then gathered with other similar groups to form that “text block.” The dimensions of the press and paper sheets determine the number of leaves but a signature always has a number of pages that is a multiple of 4.
from http://www.sfu.ca (just google bookbinding):
“The pages of a hardcover book are usually formed by stacking and sewing together, individual booklets composed of six (6) to eight (8) sheets (up to 16 sheets or more if ultra thin paper is used) folded into groups of 12 to 16 page units called signatures (some magazines and soft cover books, such as academic journals are designed with provisions for hardcover binding and thus have pages arranged into signatures). Signatures are then sewn together into a single unit called a text block. Therefore, the text block, consisting of the pages (leaves) of the book, forms the main body of the book.”
david boise ID
My soft cover Mole has 12.