The manicule is a typographical mark with the appearance of a hand with its index finger extended in a pointing gesture. It is typically used to draw the reader's attention to a certain part of a text. In older texts, it had a broader variety of uses including indicating section headers, marginal notes, and terms for cross-reference. The term manicule was derived from the Latin manicula, or 'little hand', though it has been known by many other names, often related to its various functions, including fist, index, and pointer.

Originally used for handwritten marginal notes, it saw widespread usage during the Renaissance by readers who annotated their own books. After the invention of movable type, manicules were cast in metal type blocks and were commonly used in 19th-century advertisements. The symbol's popularity declined by the end of the century, perhaps due to oversaturation. The manicule is infrequently used today, except as an occasional archaic novelty or on informal directional signs. Similar symbols persist as emoji and in the standard hand cursor icon used for clickable hyperlinks or other interactive elements.

The symbol began as a form of marginalia that developed alongside books in their now-standard codex form. The codex format for texts, introduced in the 4th century AD, was better suited to marginal notation than the continuous scrolls used in antiquity. While the text on a scroll is written on the same long length of papyrus or parchment, a codex has physically separate pages bound at one edge. Their format is very similar to the modern book, although they were typically handmade from expensive vellum or parchment made from animal hides instead of paper. Stallybrass argues that the codex encouraged discontinuous reading of a text because readers could easily flip between distant pages.

In Europe, note-taking by readers and the related usage of the manicule peaked in the Renaissance. It is difficult to say when the manicule first appeared because its usage was heavily tied to the act of reading. Renaissance owners of expensive manuscripts and of early printed books often extensively annotated their books. Many manuscripts and printed books from the period contain personal systems of marginal symbols and notes written by the book's reader, and some even have handwritten legends for the symbols and entire indexes appended to the book.