Ordinaries in heraldry are sometimes embellished with stripes of colour alongside them, have lumps added to them, shown with their edges arciform instead of straight, have their peaks and tops chopped off, pushed up and down out of the usual positions, or even broken apart.

Cottices, also spelled cottises, cotises, cotices, cotizes, are narrow stripes beside and parallel to an ordinary.

Cottices can take exotic line variations and even charge-like shapes.

An ordinary with a circular boss in the middle is described as nowy.

An ordinary with a square boss is called quadrate or, more fully, nowy quadrate. A saltire quadrate has the square boss turned lozengeways, with edges parallel to those of the saltire. An ordinary with a lozenge-shaped boss is called nowy lozengy or nowy of a lozenge (applies also to saltires)

Nowy and quadrate are usually applied only to the cross, saltire, pale, fess and bend.

An ordinary, perhaps especially a cross, might, like diamonds and mullets, be facetted, but examples of facetted ordinaries in actual heraldry are extremely hard to find.

An ordinary embowed has the edges bowed inwards producing a concavity; this is sometimes more explicitly blazoned inwardly embowed. Its opposite is enarched.