A NON-LETTER SYMBOL USED IN TYPE TO ADD DECORATION OR EMPHASIS.
Symbols, shapes, or icons that aren’t letters or numbers but still live inside fonts are called dingbats.
Think of stars, arrows, pointing hands, or fleurons. Before emojis, these were the go-to characters for adding visual flair in print.
The term dates back to the 19th century, likely printer slang for non-text elements. It stuck, and became the catch-all for these extras.
Dingbat fonts took off with digital typesetting. Zapf Dingbats, designed by Hermann Zapf in the 1970s, bundled dozens of decorative symbols into one typeface, many still in use today.
And their more eccentric cousin? Wingdings. Released by Microsoft in the 1990s, it packed quirky pictograms into a font that looked like gibberish, until you knew the trick. It’s a dingbat too, just with a bit more attitude.
