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A single letter recording the year of assay — and readable only per office.
Also known as: Year letter, Letter on silver, Date mark
One letter in a shaped shield. It dates the article precisely, and it is the hardest mark to read: each office ran its own cycles in its own typefaces, restarting periodically, so the same letter means different years in different places and centuries.
A single letter identifying the year in which the article was assayed, struck within a shaped shield.
Contexts: Jewellery
Cannot be read without knowing which office struck it. Each office ran its own cycle of letters, restarting after twenty or twenty-five and changing typeface and shield shape at each restart, so the same letter denotes different years in different offices and different centuries.
The date-letter chart a reader finds online is usually one office's cycle presented as universal. Identify the town mark first.
The typeface and the shape of the surrounding shield are as load-bearing as the letter: they identify which cycle it belongs to, and without them a letter narrows the date to several possible years centuries apart.
Optional in the United Kingdom since 1998, so a modern piece may carry a full legal hallmark with no date letter at all.
United Kingdom · Optional from 1998
A single letter struck inside a small outlined shield, the letter's typeface and the shield's outline both varying between cycles.
A date letter can only be read once the office mark identifies whose cycle it belongs to.