Word mark (computer hardware)

In computer hardware, a word mark, record mark or flag is a bit in each memory location on some variable word length computers (e.g., IBM 1401, 1410, 1620) used to mark the end of a word. Sometimes the actual bit used as a word mark on a given machine is not called word mark, but has a different name (e.g., flag on the IBM 1620, because on this machine it is multipurpose).

The term word mark should not be confused with group mark - word mark or with record mark, which are distinct characters.