Fleuron (typography)

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

A fleuron (/ˈflʊərɒn, -ən, ˈflɜːrɒn, -ən/[1]), also known as printers' flower, 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").[2] Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style calls the forms "horticultural dingbats".[3] A commonly encountered fleuron is the ❦, the floral heart or hedera (ivy leaf). It is also known as an aldus leaf (after Italian Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius).

  1. ^ "fleuron". Collins English Dictionary.
  2. ^ "Fleuron". Dictionary.com. Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2013-12-24.
  3. ^ Bringhurst, Robert, The Elements of Typographic Style, Second edition: Hartley and Marks Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-88179-132-6