MARITIME SIGNAL FLAGS

the twenty-six alphabet flags of the International Code of Signals — and what each one means alone

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: signals · everyone · reference · study

One flag alone says the line beside it; flown in groups they spell the signals of the Code. * — by sound only under COLREGs 1972. NGA Pub. 102 (1969, rev. 2020), pp. 2, 21. Checked 2026-08-27.

ONE LETTER OUT OF TWENTY-SIX SAYS NOTHING

In the Code every flag hoisted on its own is a finished sentence: “I have a diver down”, “man overboard”, “I require assistance”. Twenty-five letters have one. One has none at all.

It is R. In the table of single-letter signals it is simply absent — not a blank line, no line at all. R lives only inside groups, and speaks alone only with numerals after it: then it gives a distance in nautical miles.

On the sheet

One flag alone says the line beside it; flown in groups they spell the signals of the Code. * — by sound only under COLREGs 1972. NGA Pub. 102 (1969, rev. 2020), pp. 2, 21. Checked 2026-08-27.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 9 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

MARITIME SIGNAL FLAGS

ONE LETTER OUT OF TWENTY-SIX SAYS NOTHING

On the sheet

Printing

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