The Hedera? A Fleuron? Or a Dingbat??

Down another punctuation rabbit hole...

Photo by Riizz on Unsplash

I recently reviewed a teen novel that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

But in the review I had to remark on the sheer number of text breaks created with an stretched out tilde… or one of these: ~

As the story went on, these symbol-marked breaks increased. At least, it felt that way. By the close of an otherwise solid story they’d become somewhat irritating.

While writing the review, I had to stop, and do some digging: What to call these things? In my search, all sorts of words turned up, some bright in my tunnel!

asterism ( * * * )

pilcrow (symbol (¶) used to mark a new paragraph or section of text)

fleuron (or hedera) (flower-shaped ornament, used especially on buildings, coins, books, and pastry) —pretty words!

dinkus (a typographic symbol which often consists of three spaced asterisks or bullets in a horizontal row, ie ∗ ∗ ∗ or • • •)

& more

And then:

noun: dingbat; plural noun: dingbats

a typographical device other than a letter or numeral (such as an asterisk), used to signal divisions in text…

Whoa!

So. I was experiencing too many dingbats. Feels like so much else in life.