dinkus

English

From dinky (“tiny and cute”). The word was coined by an artist on the Australian periodical, The Bulletin, in the 1920s.^[1]

dinkus (plural dinkuses)

A small drawing or artwork used for decoration in a magazine or periodical.
(typography) A small ornament, usually a line of three asterisks (* * *), especially for the purpose of breaking up sections of a chapter, article, or other text.
Coordinate term: asterism
- 2023 January 31, Elisabeth Ribbans, “The perils of using journalist jargon outside the newsroom”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:
  More generally a dinkus is a small ornamentation, usually three asterisks, that break up sections of a book chapter, article or other written text.

^ “Dinkus”, in Macquarie Dictionary, Sydney, (Can we date this quote?): “A dinkus is a small drawing used in printing to decorate a page, or to break up a block of type. It was coined by an artist on [Sydney's] The Bulletin magazine in the 1920s, and it is derived from the word dinky, meaning 'small'”