Fleuron (typography) facts for kids

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; the term derives from the Old French: floron ("flower"). 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 (after Italian Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius), hedera leaf ("ivy leaf"), or simply hedera symbol.

Gallery

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  Early printers sought to use fleurons to replicate the style of manuscripts like this one.

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  The arabesque title page of a 1611 book.

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  Detail of a printed arabesque border in a 1616 book.

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  Specimens of printed floral borders from an 1897 type foundry specimen book.

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  Ornamented borders by Thomas Maitland Cleland, 1923.

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  Example fleuron glyphs from a digital font.

Images for kids

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  A complex fleuron with thistle from a 1870 edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

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  Τypographic ornament in ancient city of Kamiros in Rhodes island, Greece