Dinkus

Not to be confused with Dingus or Dingbat.

Three asterisks as a dinkus in the James Huneker novel Painted Veils.

In typography, a dinkus is a typographic device or convention that typically consists of three spaced asterisks or bullet symbols in a horizontal row, e.g.   ∗ ∗ ∗   or   • • •  . The device has a variety of uses, and it usually denotes an intentional omission or a logical "break" of varying degree in a written work. This latter use is similar to a subsection, and it indicates that the subsequent text should be re-contextualized. Such a dinkus typically appears centrally aligned on a line of its own with vertical spacing before and after the device. The dinkus has been in use in various forms since c. 1850. Historically, the dinkus was often represented as an asterism, ⁂, though this has fallen out of favor and is now nearly obsolete.