The Janthinas excepted, Epitoniidae have small to medium-sized shells, turritelliform, more or less slender, with very convex whorls and a primary sculpture made of radial folds or costae, often strong and lamellar, sometimes poorly elevated (Acirsa) but then very numerous; some genera are carinate but most of the species are not. Operculum paucispiral; nucleus more or less anterior.
 

Synonym Plastiscala Iredale, who wrotes: « Shell small, awl-shaped, solid, apex mamillate, sculpture weak longitudinal ribs and strong concentric lirae, varicose, mouth roundly oval, imperforate. Whorls eight and a half, plus one and a half smooth mamillate whorls, the adult sculpture showing about twenty rounded depressed longitudinal ribs overridden by stout cords, about six on the penultimate whorl extending on to the base on the last whorl, where there is an indistinct encircling basal cord. » – T. Iredale: “Australian molluscan notes” no. 2, Records of the Australian Museum vol.19(5), Sydney 1936, p.302.
 

« Shell narrow and turriculate, imperforate; lamellae thin, not deviated on the sutures, with a few flat varixes; fine spiral streaks; basal disc thin, crossed by the lamellae; no umbilicus, weak bulge, almost no auricle; peristome discontinuous, except for a thin internal layer which covers the parietal region; labrum broadly bordered on the outside, slightly oblique. […] This group is intermediate between Acrilla and Clathroscala: this genus is – in my opinion – distinct of these two others, because the test has neither the thickness of the second, nor the thinness of the first; because its basal disc – in which the lamellae are not completely embedded, as in Acrilla – does not have the size of that of Clathroscala; the bead and the auricle tend, on the other hand, to disappear, the peristome is perfectly circular, instead of being angular as in Acrilla, but it is not absolutely discontinuous; the ornamentation is not canceled like that of the other two genera in question, and above all it includes varixes which already announce the edge of the labrum; but it is composed of fine lamellae, very short to truth, as in most Acrillinae, and well different from the ribs which characterize the Clathroscalinae: this is what fixes the classification of this genus in the first of the two aforementioned subfamilies. » – M. Cossmann: Essais de paléoconchologie comparée vol.9, Paris 1912, p.65-66.
 

« Shell turreted, thin; whorls united, cancellated, with a few thin, irregular varices; aperture semilunar; inner lip gibbose in the middle; outer lip thin, simple. » – H. & A. Adams: The genera of recent Mollusca: arranged according to their organization vol.1, London 1853, p.223.
 

Whorls often shouldered adapically, often bearing some labial varices; heavy sculpture of axial folds sometimes expanded subsuturally, crossed by a multitude of spiral ribs; this sculpture is often sharp, but sometimes looks blunted, giving the shell a cancellate appearance, with the interspaces between axials and spirals reduced to little pinholes.
 

Synonym Solvaclathrus Iredale, 1936, who writes: « Shell small, glassy, uncoiled, distantly ribbed, ribs lamellate, interstices smooth and shining, mouth subcircular, varicose. Apical whorls three, glassy, adult whorls seven, showing seven or eight distant lamellae, the mouth presenting the last of these as a surrounding varix. » – T. Iredale: “Australian molluscan notes, no. 2”, Records of the Australian Museum vol. 19(5), Sydney 1936, p.299. In fact, the annular lamellae can be very numerous, like in aldeynzeri, and, apart from laxata (whose taxonomic assigment to the genus could be questioned), all the members of Cycloscala are markedly uncoiled.
 

« Shell usually white and polished, turriculated, perforate, but the umbilicus frequently covered by an expansion of the inner lip; spire elongated, the apex more or less inflected; whorls numerous, rounded, in contact or separated, ornamented with longitudinal ribs or thin lamellae, often continuous across the suture; peristome entire, thickened, reflected. » – H. Suter: Manual of the New Zealand Mollusca with an atlas of quarto plates, Wellington 1913, p.319. The interspaces between the longitudinal folds can be smooth or spirally ribbed. Suture deep.
 

Shell often more conical than tapering; whorls convex with suture marked; primary sculpture possibly bearing labial varices; interspaces smooth, umbilicus closed.
 

« Shell conical, corvered with spiral rows of tubercles; the apex consists of a cylindrical process of several whorls, which is closely striated lengthwise; operculum horny, paucispiral with a lateral nucleaus. » – J. G. Jeffreys: “On the Mollusca procured during the ‘Lightning’ and ‘Porcupine’ expeditions 1868-70. (Part VI)”, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London for the year 1883, p.113.
 

Strong axial ribs instead of laminae; no varix before the adult labial thickening. Sometimes, presence of a thick intritacalx (soft, chalky layer covering the surface, differing from the underlying shell in being « much softer, and, in many cases, with intricate sculpture » – D’Attilio & Radwin: “The Intritacalx, an undescribed shell layer in mollusks”, The veliger 13(4), Berkeley 1971, p.344).
 

Shell imperforate, high-spired; whorls devoid of shoulders, with strong but not elevated axial costulations crossed by weaker spiral ribs; sometimes, labial varices scattered on the spire; no umbilicus.
 

Shell tapering, whorls moderately convex, suture marked, radial sculpture slightly expanding subsuturally, spiral sculpture made of numerous thin striae visible also on the radials; no umbilicus.
 

Pelagic sea-snails, small to medium-sized, thin-walled, floating at the surface of the seas, and feeding on Hydrozoa. Mouth often strongly expanded, especially longitudinally; columella straight, suture marked.
 

Shell purple, often using a countershading camoflage (cf. J. j&nthina). In some species, the growth-marks, often conspicuous, are prosocline above the periphery, and opisthocline below.