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Usually as part of a heading / sub-heading, you can often see symbols like in the image below on either side of the text:

text "Short Phrase" between fleurons

I don't mean these symbols specifically, just the general name for these symbols that illustrate that some text is important in a way. Another example is tildes on either side of a phrase. It's been on my mind for embarrassingly long, and none of my web searches prove to be helpful.

The reason I ask: I'm trying to make a food menu that looks like those you see in a diner or the like. I'm pretty sure adding these types of symbols will make it look aesthetically pleasing, but I don't know how to search for this design inspiration without knowing what to call it.

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    It'll be a domain-specific (typesetting) term. Perhaps better asked on Stack Exchange TEX
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 23 at 16:32
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    ...further to my comments under @psmears' answer, Maybe someone on Stack Exchange TEX could design you a pair of heterograms saying Rob's on one side and Diner on the other! I have no idea which letters can be successfully rotated / mirrored to give which other letters, but stay + here looks neat, and maybe that could be tweaked to give Eat Here. (On a rotating sign outside your diner? :)
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 23 at 17:33
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    @FumbleFingers tex.se is about one family of typesetting systems, not typesetting in general. This would be off topic here as written, though a question about how to do it in (La)TeX etc. would be fine. It seems more like a fit to Graphic Design
    – Chris H
    Feb 24 at 11:09

3 Answers 3

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These look like fleurons:

A fleuron, also known as printers' flower, is a typographic element, or glyph, used either as a punctuation mark or as an ornament for typographic compositions.

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    I suppose OP needs a matching pair of mirror image fleurons. I came across ambigram when I had a look myself, but Google doesn't offer much support for the collocation "fleuron ambigram" or "ambigram fleuron". But now I've just found out about hetero-ambigram = heterogram ("special case ambigram that spells out two different words when rotated 180°) I gotta say that If I was gonna design that menu, I'd bust a gut to find a heterogram where the two different words were obviously food-related.
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 23 at 16:50
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    I remember being fascinated by Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" when I realised the entire front cover of my copy was "palindromically" typeset. But how cool would it be to have a heterogram saying, for example, Steak and Chips either side of your restaurant's name on the menu cards!
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 23 at 16:58
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    @RosieF: It was 40 years ago when I read Hofstadter, so no surprise I didn't remember the word ambigram. But the fact of the matter is I didn't even remember that fascinating book cover until I actually encountered an image of it online just now. I'm surprised to see they don't have that specific graphic on the front cover of current editions.
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 23 at 17:24
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    Thanks, all of you! And yeah I'd love to make an ambigram for a logo but man would that take a while haha. "Fleuron" is exactly what I wanted to incorporate into my site, so thanks @psmears
    – Robo Mop
    Feb 23 at 19:27
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    Hello @FumbleFingers I have an offering for you, in return for the two fine image-linked comments that you provided for us earlier. Mine is evocative of your Stay+Here comment on the question: a very special ambigram. I'm a hyper-active (though not at all hyperactive) user of Twitter, so I promptly viewed your link to that image of the front cover of the Metamagical Themas! I might respond to Papineau and link here, as his efforts are appreciated farther afield than he (perhaps) realizes.
    – Ellie Kesselman
    Feb 24 at 10:15
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In typography, these ornaments are called ❦ dingbats ❦

Here are some:

dingbats

Image source: Beyond the Bullets: 6 Great Uses For Dingbat Fonts

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Sometimes, the term arabesque is used for such decorative elements.

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