Dingbats are graphic typographical ornaments designed to be used as typesetting spacers. Dingbats can help a printed document feel less blocky and overwhelming, and depending on the dingbats used and how they are used, they can add a note of humor or sobriety to a piece. Dingbat fonts and large collections of dingbats are available from a number of companies, and several foundries continue to cast dingbats for letterpress printers.
Typographic ornaments have a long and illustrious history. Almost as long as people have been writing, they have been embellishing their printed materials with various ornaments, and dingbats were not far behind when the printing press was invented. Dingbats can serve a practical purpose as well as an aesthetic one, breaking up the visual space in a printed piece and occasionally being used as symbols to indicate various things.
Dingbats are available in a variety of styles. Many have floral themes, in which case they are referred to as fleurons. Others are shaped like small animals, while others have a geometric design. A number of dingbats are also designed to function as symbols, such as pointed hands, text bullets, and so on. Various computer-related symbols are included in many modern dingbat sets.
You can probably find an example of a dingbat if you look through your printed materials. Dingbats can be found between paragraphs, on the edges of pages, and occasionally near the page number in the upper corner. In 19th century printed advertisements and information posters, you can see some rather florid uses of dingbats and eccentric fonts, when printers erred on the side of garishness to get the point across.
As typographic trends shift, so does the use of dingbats, with some periods featuring sparse typesetting and others featuring a flurry of dingbats, borders, and other ornamental elements. Dingbats can be used to add space, demarcate different sections of a piece, and draw attention to a specific area of interest in your own printed materials. Most computers come with a few default dingbat fonts, such as Wingdings and Webdings, and font manufacturers can also provide more. A number of dingbats, such as this one: U+273F>, have their own Unicodes.