The Manual of Heraldry

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All the figures denoting differences are also used as perfect charges on the shield; but their size and situation will sufficiently determine whether the figure is used as a perfect coat of arms, or is introduced as a difference or diminution.

Sisters have no differences in their coats of arms. They are permitted to bear the arms of their father, as the eldest son does after his father's decease.

Guillim, Leigh, and other ancient armorists mention divers figures, which, they assert, were formerly added to coats of arms as marks of degradation for slander, cowardice, murder, and other crimes, and to them they give the name of abatements of honor; others have called them blots in the escutcheon: but as no instance can be produced of such dishonorable marks having been borne in a coat of arms, they may justly be considered as chimerical, or at any rate obsolete, and unworthy of consideration at the present time. Porney pithily observes, "that arms being marks of honor, they cannot admit of any note of infamy, nor would any one bear them if they were so branded. It is true, a man may be degraded for divers crimes, particularly high treason; but in such cases the escutcheon is reversed, trod upon, and torn in pieces, to denote a total extinction and suppression of the honor and dignity of the person to whom it belonged."

The only abatement used in heraldry is the baton: this denotes illegitimacy. It is borne in the escutcheons of the dukes that assume the royal arms as the illegitimate descendants of King Charles the Second.