Book Care

By Georg Hartong

​There is apparently a widespread bad habit of marking the place where the reading of a book has stopped, by making a fold in the top corner of a page: making dog-ears. In other languages the same phenomenon has a different name: in Dutch: 'ezelsoor', in German: 'Eselsohr' and in Danish: 'Aeselorer', all meaning 'donkey's ear'. In South-Africa, in the Boeren-language (familiar to Dutch), they name it 'varkore', pig's ear.
How is this called in French, Spanish, Italian and other languages? Does anybody know?  

The first scan shows three German bookmarks. 

The second scan a Danish and two Dutch bookmarks; on 'operatie ezelsoor': 'a book is not made of steel' and 'a book is not made of stone'; Bladwijzer means Bookmark; the remaining text: 'donkey's ears are ears that do not belong in books; even closed you keep seeing the book; donkey's ears spoil the beauty of a book; can you promise never to make donkey's ears again, Hi-a? ​

The third scan shows an English bookmark, a South-African one and a shaped one. ​

The fourth scan shows the English translation of the South-African one, but not literally: 'bending the pages' = 'met varkore merque'.

Who can supply this note?

For more examples of bookmarks encouraging the care of books, see the Gallery page on this topic.