Dingbats

Overview Properties List Table

A dingbat is an ornament, character, or spacer used in typesetting. Sometimes it's more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character often employed for the creation of box frames. The term was later applied to the computer industry for describing fonts that have symbols and shapes in the positions designated for alphabetical or numeric characters.

In 1977 the German typographer Hermann Zapf created more than a thousand drafts for glyphs. Needless to say, 360 of them were confirmed by ITC — International Typeface Corporation. That's how we got the font “Zapf dingbats”. It was divided in three sections: series 100, 200, and 300. This Unicode block in particular presents Zapf dingbats 100.

Among various arrows, stars and crosses, you will find snowflakes, cards, digits, and even some emojis. I personally adore the variety of scissors that this block offers ✂ ✀ ✃