Last week Joseph Barnosky asked a numismatic vocabulary question that had me flummoxed. While I'd be the first to insist that everything in numismatic has a name, dammit, I couldn't dredge up that factoid no matter how hard I tried. Others I reached out to had trouble, too. -Editor

"Yes, they have a name and I know what it is, but it won't surface in my memory. I might have used it in one of my books. If the name of the images before and after paper money serial numbers are not mentioned in the Chamblis-Hessler edition, I have not mentioned it anywhere. Peter Huntoon might know."

At 97, Gene can be forgiven. And I'm very certain there's a name for that "I know I know that word but can't think of it feeling" that I can't think of either. -Editor

"Fair question. Having never heard a technical term for these characters, I use "serial number termination characters" or "serial number terminator characters."

"Could they be dingbats?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingbat

"In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames (similar to box-drawing characters), or as a dinkus (section divider)."

Thanks - that's the first actual word I've seen suggested. Definitely fits, but the banknote profession could well have a different (or more specialized) name. -Editor

"I assume those specific typographic glyphs are named. I have no idea what that name is."

I submitted your question to the Society of Paper Money Collectors Board. The depth of their wisdom is such that I received THREE different answers, any of which may be plausible (what do I know, I tend to splash in the shallow end of knowledge's pool).

Anyway, here they are:

1. Ornamental Placeholders
2. Termination Characters
3. Printer's Embellishment Marks

I casually googled each term, along with the word "printing". Indeed all three do seem to be terms of art that refer to some aspect of printing and typography. (1) may be better termed "Printer's Ornaments" and covers devices that serve purely decorative purposes—dingbats, scrolls, etc. (2) seems to refer to End of Line (EOL) characters that are used in electronic printing. Finally (3) is used describe marks that appear at the end of serial numbers (like the stars used to designate replacement notes).

My money is on (3), Printer's Embellishment Marks. The SPMC's Frank Clark suggested it."

Sarah Miller of Heritage passed the question to some of their in-house experts. -Editor

"I believe these symbols are referred to as "Termination Characters", per my readings and what I have heard over the years."

"Sarah I had the same question about the name of the symbol used on US nationals (and other classes of large size) but never finished looking into it.

"Peter Huntoon has called them terminator brackets or brackets in his book. Dave Bowers, in his Encyclopedia, called them "typographical ornaments." Doug Walcutt in his 1995 Rag Picker journal article on design and serial number protocols described them as "ornaments" that resulted from an April 1869 BEP decision to formally place prefix and suffix letters and/or ornaments on the serials among other security changes. But these sound like generic English language descriptors more than a printing term or BEP term, I just don't know.

I'd really still like to hear what BEP called the symbols, they must have had some name. And the printing world had to have a name for these symbols too."

"I looked through the 1925 Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Typeface Catalog 25-A (500+ pages!) and, although I couldn't find a symbol that matched exactly, similar ones are indeed called "ornaments" in the book. This was, therefore, a technical term. Numbering machines (actually printing "heads" with wheels containing the digits and symbols and which advanced mechanically with each stroke of the press) of the type that would have been used back then were made by four main manufacturers, according to an abridged (xerox, incomplete) copy of the 1917 American Type Founders Company Supplementary Catalogue I have. I located that book in the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago. They were Roberts, American, Bates and Wetter. My guess would be that the Bureau designed and commissioned a proprietary non-standard symbol (ornament) which was made to order by the manufacturer and supplied in their numbering machines."

Thanks everyone! Sometimes it takes a village. I guess we still don't exactly know if these doodads have a single word formal name, but the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does sound like the best authoritative source. Perhaps someday someone will turn up a specific reference. Meanwhile, I'll go with Peter Huntoon's phrase "serial number termination characters" or my variant "serial number termination ornaments", since they aren't exactly characters. -Editor

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