{{umbrella|Fingerprint}}
*The piece of text that falls precisely above the necessary signature, is noted. In actual reality, this means: the characters that are wholly within the signature. In the case of continuing doubt regarding the situation, two fingerprints can be taken. It can happen that a heavier use of ink leads to differences/
*If a signature only falls below a part of one character or parts of two consecutive characters, these parts count as whole characters.
<blockquote>'''''Example'''''<br>
{| style="text-align:center"
|'''M'''
|'''MA'''
|'''nu wel'''
|A
|A2
|A3
|}
Here, respectively M, MA and $ are noted in the fingerprint.</blockquote>
*By characters, we mean: typographical entities such as letters, numerals, punctuation marks, symbols, etc. A space counts as one character, regardless of its length, and is displayed as $ (dollar sign). The characters are transcribed according to the general STCV-transcription rules. The 'ij' (regardless of the language or meaning) is considered as one or two characters, depending on the typography used within the book.
*For the capital letter Q with a long tail that continues under one or more of the following letters, this tail is neglected for the purposes of the fingerprint. For example, if in the words 'urbs. Quae est', the tail of the Q continues underneath the letters 'uae es', then the following counts as text above the signature:
**Qu if the circle of the Q and the u are above the signature
**bs.$Q if the letters bs. and the circle of the Q are above the signature
**ae$e if the letters ae and the letter e are above the signature
This is all despite the continuation of the tail of the Q. Similar cases (where a curl continues underneath or above the following letters) are treated the same way. However, for the italic long ''ſ'' connected to the following letter in a ligature, for example 'st' (ſt), the full letter needs to fall above the signature in order to be included in the fingerprint.
*The ligatures Æ, æ, Œ, œ, & (always transcribed as a ligature) and ß (transcribed as 'ss') are considered as one character. All other ligatures are considered to be multiple characters. Abbreviations with curls are ignored; if there is an abbreviation mark, this is noted.
*Small caps are also considered capital letters: I<span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">esv</span> C<span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">hristi</span> thus becomes 'IESV CHRISTI' in the fingerprint.
*If a fingerprint in non-Latin characters can be avoided by using the respectively following or preceding signature, this is to be preferred. It means any problems with transcription of ligatures and accents can be avoided.
*If there is not a single signature with Latin characters above it throughout the text, the Greek letters are transcribed into Latin letters. Other alphabets (Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Old Church Slavonic, Coptic, Demotic, Aramaic, Linear A) are not transcribed for the fingerprint. In the worst case, the fingerprint will be limited to the year-and-format code.
*In order to avoid interpretation differences regarding punctuation marks (especially comma's), the rule is that there is never a space between a punctuation mark and the preceding word. Between the punctuation mark and the following word, however, a space is always noted.