For example, in Wingdings font: 
What are the symbols in boxes used for?
I have checked the wiki pages of Wingdings, List of symbols, Ampersand and Unicode/List of useful symbols, but I can't find what I want.
Answer
They're typographic ornaments. The Wikipedia article on fleurons offers a good explanation of their use.
A fleuron is a typographic element, or glyph, used either as a punctuation mark or as an ornament for typographic compositions. Fleurons are stylized forms of flowers or leaves. Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style calls the forms "horticultural dingbats." It is also known as a printers' flower, or more formally as an aldus leaf hedera leaf, or simply hedera (ivy leaf) symbol.
There are names assigned to all Wingdings symbols, here are the ones you've highlighted (one from each set for the sake of brevity):
budleafne
vineleafboldne
quiltsquare2
leafccwsw
They are included in the Ornamental Dingbats Unicode block (PDF) and described slightly differently there.
No comments:
Post a Comment