Talk:Dingbat (disambiguation)

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In the UK a dingbat is a puzzle, where a word is represented using letters and fonts. Some popular examples are:

o er t o           - painless operation

GR 12" AVE         - one foot in the grave

        gesg
        segg
        gegs
        gges               - scrambled eggs

        k k
        c c
        u u
        t t
        s s
word word word word    - too stuck up for words

poFISHnd           - big fish in a small pond

Dab Manual of Style changes

I plan to radically change this page to match WP:MOSDAB and am saving the original here:

• A dingbat is an ornament or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament"
• Dingbat is also a slang term, used to describe someone who has a silly, foolish, or clownish demeanor. It was a favorite insult of the fictional character Archie Bunker in the 1970s television show All in the Family (particularly when addressing his wife, Edith).
• Cartoonist George Herriman had a newspaper comic strip called "The Dingbat Family", as it was originally of a small size so that printers could use it to fill space on the comics page like a dingbat. "The Dingbat Family" was an ancestor of Herriman's most famous creation, "Krazy Kat". The comic strip may have influenced the slang usage of the term "dingbat" as given above.
• The Dingbats of Danger Street were a DC Comics kids' team created by Jack Kirby.
• There is a board game called Dingbats, in which players must solve rebuses. Following its release, rebuses in this style enjoyed a revival of interest in the UK and the word dingbat was used to describe them. Their popularity peaked in the 1980s, but they still appear in national newspaper's puzzle sections.
• Dingbat (building) also refers to a building on stilts with room for parking underneath, a style of architecture common to post-war development in Los Angeles.
• In South Africa (at least), a Dingbat was a popular toy in the 1970s. It was made up of a hard plastic bat connected to a ball with an elastic string.

(John User:Jwy talk) 03:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)