The basic facts amount to this: dingbats are what people call typographic ornamentations. The term is said to have been coined in 1904. People first started using dingbats as spacers in typesetting. This was thought to help large blocks of text feel less solid. Depending on the context, dingbats were used to lift a block of text up with humour, to decorate a block of text or even to make the text seeming more sombre.

As it turns out, a dingbat (that’s in the singular, not plural) is a whole different bag. A dingbat is one of those boxy, stucco-front, 2-3 storey buildings you find all across Southern California. While we have nothing against boxy stucco front 2-3 storey buildings in Southern California, our main interest here is in the idea of dingbats as typographic symbols.

We’ve searched high and low to find out exactly who first used dingbats, who named them, how they’re used, to what end and why. There are two stories we’d like to believe are true and they go something like this:

The first story is short, but nice. According to some, the word dingbat started being used because it made the sound a linotype machine makes while it’s printing. Ding. Bat. –– Ding. Bat. –– Ding. Bat. The amazing thing is, once you see and hear it in this way, the more likely this seems.

The other story is about a daily comic strip called The Dingbat Family. Members of the family were: Mr. E. Pluribus Dingbat, a short office clerk and his wife Mrs. Minnie Dingbat. Minnie, despite her name, was actually really big and towered over her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Dingbat had three kids: their son Cicero, a daughter Imogene, and our personal favourite: the dingbat baby who had no name. The strip is all about the family and what they get up to in their New York apartment, and how Mr. Dingbat becomes especially obsessed with the neighbours upstairs. The Dingbat Family comic strip ran from 1910 to 1916 and was George Herriman’s creation (the same Herriman that later became famous for the Krazy Kat comics).