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Information about Dingbat

This article is about the typesetter's ornament. For other uses, see Dingbat (disambiguation).


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Poem typeset with generous use of decorative dingbats, 1880s


A dingbat is an ornament or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament". The term supposedly originated as onomatopoeia in old style metal-type print shops, where extra space around text or illustrations would be filled by "ding"ing an ornament into the space then "bat"ing tight to be ready for inking .

The term continued to be used in the computer industry to describe fonts that had symbols and shapes in the positions designated for alphabetical or numeric characters.

An example (something like ITC Zapf dingbats series 100):

 ✁✂✃✄☎✆✇✈✉☛☞✌✍✎?
✐✑✒✓✔✕✖✗✘✙✚✛✜✝✞?
✠✡✢✣✤✥✦✧★✩✪✫✬✭✮?
✰✱✲✳✴✵✶✷✸✹✺✻✼✽✾?
❀❁❂❃❄❅❆❇❈❉❊❋●❍■?
❐❑❒▲▼◆❖◗❘❙❚❛❜❝❞ 


The advent of Unicode and the universal character set it provides allowed commonly-used dingbats to be given their own character codes, from 2700 to 27BF. Although fonts claiming Unicode coverage will contain glyphs for dingbats in addition to alphabetic characters, fonts that have dingbats in place of alphabetic characters continue to be popular, primarily for ease of input.

Unicode dingbats

Main article: Unicode symbols


Unicode Dingbat Range (2700–27BF)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
2700 ✀✁✂✃✄✅✆✇✈✉✊✋✌✍✎?
2710 ✐✑✒✓✔✕✖✗✘✙✚✛✜✝✞?
2720 ✠✡✢✣✤✥✦✧✨✩✪✫✬✭✮?
2730 ✰✱✲✳✴✵✶✷✸✹✺✻✼✽✾?
2740 ❀❁❂❃❄❅❆❇❈❉❊❋❌❍❎?
2750 ❐❑❒❓❔❕❖❗❘❙❚❛❜❝❞?
2760 ❠❡❢❣❤❥❦❧❨❩❪❫❬❭❮?
2770 ❰❱❲❳❴❵❶❷❸❹❺❻❼❽❾?
2780 ➀➁➂➃➄➅➆➇➈➉➊➋➌➍➎?
2790 ➐➑➒➓➔➕➖➗➘➙➚➛➜➝➞?
27A0 ➠➡➢➣➤➥➦➧➨➩➪➫➬➭➮?
27B0 ➰➱➲➳➴➵➶➷➸➹➺➻➼➽➾?

Typefaces

For more examples of dingbat fonts, see Wingdings and Webdings. Another famous dingbat font, Zapf Dingbats, was designed by the typographer Hermann Zapf.

See also

External links

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Typography terminology
PagePagination Recto Verso Margin Column Canons of page construction
Enlarge picture
Lowercase 'a' in Adobe Caslon
ParagraphWidows and orphans Leading River Baseline Median Alignment Justification
CharacterLigature Letter-spacing Kerning Majuscule Minuscule Initial x-height Ascender Descender Diacritics Counter Subscript Superscript
StyleSerif Italic Slab serif Sans-serif Blackletter Script Dingbat
PunctuationHanging punctuation Hyphenation Curly quotes En dash Em dash
TypesettingType design Type foundry Movable type Calligraphy Phototypesetting Letterpress Typeface Font Computer font Point Pica Cicero Em En Lorem ipsum Hamburgefonts Punchcutting
Character encoding Rasterization Hinting
A dingbat is an ornament or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament"

Dingbat might also refer to:
  • Dingbat, slang term, used to describe someone silly, notably applied to the TV character Edith Bunker by her husband

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Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium. Before the advent of desktop publishing, typesetting of printed material was produced in print shops by compositors working by hand, and later with machines.
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For the supervillain, see .


Onomatopoeia (occasionally spelled onomatopœia) is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as "click," "buzz," or "bluuuh," or animal noises
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computer is a machine which manipulates data according to a list of instructions.

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Please help recruit one or [ improve this article] yourself. See the talk page for details.
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The international standard ISO/IEC 10646 defines the Universal Character Set (UCS) as a character set on which many encodings are based. It contains nearly a hundred thousand abstract characters, each identified by an unambiguous name and an integer number called its
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glyph is the shape given in a particular typeface to a specific grapheme or symbol.

The term for the abstract entity represented by a glyph is character: a typographical character may be a grapheme (an element of a writing system), but also a numeral, a punctuation
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Unicode ranges encode Symbols
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Wingdings <nowiki /> Category Symbol
<nowiki />
Designer(s) Charles Bigelow
Kris Holmes <nowiki /> <nowiki />
Foundry Bigelow and Holmes, Microsoft Corp.
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Webdings <nowiki /> Category Symbol
<nowiki />
Designer(s) Vincent Connare
Sue Lightfoot
Ian Patterson
Geraldine Wade <nowiki /> <nowiki />
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Zapf Dingbats is one of the more common dingbat typefaces, which first gained wide distribution as one of 35 PostScript fonts built into Apple's LaserWriter Plus. It was designed by the typographer Hermann Zapf and licensed by International Typeface Corporation.
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Hermann Zapf (born November 8, 1918) is a German typeface designer who lives in Darmstadt, Germany. He is married to calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf von Hesse.
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The Miscellaneous Symbols plane of Unicode (2600–26FF) contains various glyphs representing things from a variety of categories: Astrological, Astronomical, Chess, Dice, Ideological symbols,
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