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Nota bene ( ; plural: notate bene) is the Latin language phrase meaning note well. In manuscripts, nota bene is abbreviated in upper-case as NB and N.B., and in lower-case as n.b. and nb; the editorial usages of nota bene and notate bene first appeared in the English style of writing around the year 1711. In Modern English, since the 14th century, the editorial usage of NB is common to the legal writing of documents to direct the reader's attention to a thematically relevant aspect of the subject that qualifies the matter being litigated, whereas in academic writing, the editorial abbreviation n.b. is a casual synonym for footnote.
In medieval manuscripts, the editorial marks used to draw the reader's attention to a supporting text also are called nota bene marks; however, the catalogue of medieval editorial marks does not include the NB abbreviation. The medieval equivalents to the n.b.-mark are anagrams derived from the four letters of the Latin word nota, thus the abbreviation DM for dignum memoria ("worth remembering") and the typographic index symbol of the Manicule (☞), the little hand that indicates the start of the relevant supporting text.Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), p. 44.
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