Asterisk (characters)

*

The asterisk , also asterisk , the asterisk or the asterisk ( * , older as a note symbol also ※ ; from late Latin asteriscus , from ancient Greek ἀστερίσκος asterískos , "asterisk") is a typographic symbol in the form of a five or six-pointed star.

8-pointed asterisk as a footnote mark in a German print from 1779

The asterisk in the fonts Arial , Times New Roman , Calibri , Cambria , Palatino Linotype, Andron Mega Corpus, DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Serif, Cardo, Courier New and Consolas , each together with the letter I to mark the capital height

use

Typography and writing

Footnote mark
Commonly used symbol for born in typography and genealogy (e.g .: * February 11, 1923). This was conceived as a genealogical symbol in 1910 (with the designation "Stern") by the Berlin Herold Association and used for the first time in the supplement to the 6th edition of Meyer's Large Conversation Dictionary .
Marking of mandatory fields in forms

Asterisk ( psalm prayer) , indicates the middle cadence of a psalm verse

Placeholders for letters that have not been written out in taboo words (eg " f *** ") or words that cannot be written out for other reasons

Bracketing of inflectives and correction of (typing) errors in chats and discussion forums on the Internet

Gender asterisks for the inclusion of non- binary gender identities in the context of language gendering

Communication technology and data processing

Klarstern key on a desktop calculating machine , around 1970

Special key on telephone keypads

On calculating machines , the sum key is marked with a star symbol (" clear star "). In this function, the symbol is standardized in DIN ISO 7000 "Graphic symbols on facilities" as the symbol ISO-7000-0656 "Total" (German "Result").

Various computer application programs accept the asterisk as keyboard input for the mark and then display it as an asterisk.

When entering passwords , only asterisks are often displayed instead of the characters entered for security reasons. Many operating systems now use the special character “black circle” for this purpose ( ●see Unicode block geometric shapes ).

Bold: When text formatting is not available, the asterisk is often used like a quotation mark to indicate emphasis or the font style in bold . Since these spellings are also common in e-mails (because rich text format is often not available or was not yet usable for this when e-mail emerged ), such text is highlighted in many e-mail programs. These functions are increasingly being used in the comment functions of many weblog systems, mostly with the help of various simplified markup languages (such as Markdown ): Some of these use the asterisk as " source code " to highlight text passages ( *kursiv*, **fett**).

Bullets : Similar to the bold type, the asterisk acts as a bullet point for lists. Many word processing programs therefore automatically convert a single asterisk at the beginning of a paragraph into a formatted list item as you type. For example, markdown or wiki syntax convert lines that begin with an asterisk into list elements according to certain rules (the syntax ).

mathematics

Operator in the formal language , there Kleene star called

Symbol for a certain / special value or a point with a special property, a critical / stationary point / value , to delimit regular values / points , for example for an intersection , extremum , a zero, etc. ${\ displaystyle \! \ x ^ {*}}$ ${\ displaystyle \! \ P ^ {*}}$

Symbol for the convolution , a mathematical operator for linking functions

Identification of complex conjugate numbers and adjoint matrices

Abbreviation for significant group differences in statistics . The number of asterisks marks the level of significance , p <0.05 : *; p <0.01: ** and p <0.001: ***.

Computer science

In many programming languages , the symbol is used as a multiplication operator.
Two consecutive asterisks are the exponential operator in BASIC , Ada , Fortran , Perl , Python, and Ruby .

In C and C ++ , it is also the dereferencing operator and is used to declare pointers.

Wildcard in many operating systems or computer programs ; it stands for any character string .

When entering search terms in search engines , within websites or in databases , it is often accepted as a placeholder for unknown characters (strings).

In the MediaWiki markup language , e.g. B. When writing a Wikipedia article and with Markdown , it is used at the beginning of the line for marking as an element of a list.

Linguistics

In linguistics , the double asterisk often appears before ungrammatic , unacceptable word forms or sentence constructions .

In the linguistic branch of philology and in etymology , it indicates that a root , a word, a form or a sound is not documented in writing (documented), but developed ( reconstructed ).

chemistry

In chemistry , it marks the stereocenter in chiral molecules.

Character encoding

Unicode

The Unicode defines a variety of stars and star-like symbols:

Coding in Unicode
Code point	character	description	Designation in the standard	block
U + 002A	*	asterisk	ASTERISK	Basic Latin (0000–007F)
U + 066D	٭	Arabic star , five-pointed	ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR	Arabic (0600-06FF)
U + 203B	※	Komejirushi (Japanese reference mark)	REFERENCE MARK	General punctuation (2000–206F)
U + 2042	⁂	Asterism	ASTERISM	General punctuation (2000–206F)
U + 204E	⁎	subscript asterisk	LOW ASTERISK	General punctuation (2000–206F)
U + 2051	⁑	two vertically arranged asterisks	TWO ASTERISKS ALIGNED VERTICALLY	General punctuation (2000–206F)
U + 205C	⁜	Cross with dots	DOTTED CROSS	General punctuation (2000–206F)
U + 2217	∗	Hodge star operator	ASTERISK OPERATOR	Math operators (2200–22FF)
U + 229B	⊛	circled star operator	CIRCLED ASTERISK OPERATOR	Math operators (2200–22FF)
U + 22C6	⋆	Star operator usage: power in APL	STAR OPERATOR	Math operators (2200–22FF)
U + 2605	★	Black five-pointed star	BLACK STAR	Various symbols (2600-26FF)
U + 2606	☆	White five-pointed star	WHITE STAR	Various symbols (2600-26FF)
U + 26B9	⚹	Sextile	SEXTILE	Various symbols (2600–26FF)
U + 2731	✱	bold asterisk	HEAVY ASTERISK	Dingbats (2700-27BF)
U + 2732	✲	bold asterisk with an open center	OPEN CENTER ASTERISK	Dingbats (2700-27BF)
U + 29C6	⧆	Asterisk enclosed in a square	SQUARED ASTERISK	Assorted Math Symbols-B (2980–29FF)
U + 2A6E	⩮	Equal sign with a star above	EQUALS WITH ASTERISK	Additional math operators (2A00–2AFF)
U + A673	﹡	Slavic asterisk	SLAVONIC ASTERISK	Cyrillic extended-B (A640 – A69F)
U + FE61	﹡	little asterisk	SMALL ASTERISK	Small shape variants (FE50 – FE6F)
U + FF0A	＊	Asterisk full width ( CJK )	FULLWIDTH ASTERISK	Half-width and full-width forms (FF00 – FFEF)

In addition, in the Unicode block Dingbats in the area U + 2729 – U + 274B there are a number of more or less star-shaped symbol characters (sometimes called ASTERISK).

TeX / LaTeX

In the markup languages of the formula set TeX or LaTeX, one encodes:

Coding in latex
Instruction	symbol	comment
`*`	*	`\**`Use at the beginning of the line if necessary
`\textasteriskcentered`	${\ displaystyle \ ast}$
`\ast`	${\ displaystyle \ ast}$	Math mode ($ ... $) required
`\circledast`	${\ displaystyle \ circledast}$	Package "amssymb" and math mode ($ ... $) required
`\star`	${\ displaystyle \ star}$	Math mode ($ ... $) required
`\bigstar`	${\ displaystyle \ bigstar}$	Package "amssymb" and math mode ($ ... $) required
`\FiveStarOpen`	☆	Package "bbding" required; to be embedded in \ mbox {} or \ text {} when subscript or superscript

Web links

Commons : asterisks - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Duden. German universal dictionary. The comprehensive dictionary of meanings in contemporary German. 8th, revised and expanded edition. Edited by the von Duden editorial team. Dudenverlag, Berlin 2015, p. 188.
↑ Pierer's Universal Lexikon, Volume 1. Altenburg 1857, p. 850, keyword Asteriscus ( at zeno.org )
^ Anonymous: principles of heraldry or heraldic art . 2 (Wapen Art). Pützische Buchhandlung, Cologne 1779, Chur Hanover, p. 58 .
^ Stephan Kekule von Stradonitz: About the use of an international auxiliary language for genealogical research . In: Mitteilungen der Zentralstelle für Deutschen Personen- und Familiengeschichte , 6th issue, Leipzig 1910, p. 30. genealogy.net , accessed on August 31, 2010
^ Friedrich Forssman , Ralf de Jong: Detail typography . 2nd Edition. Hermann Schmidt, Mainz 2004, ISBN 3-87439-642-8 , punctuation marks - everyday special characters, p. 190 .
↑ Walther Multa 32. In: Computer Lexicon. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .
↑ Erich Ruhland: The secretary. A teaching, work and reference work in question and answer. 5th edition, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 144: 60. What does the sum key do? - It prints the result ("Klarstern") and brings the counter back to zero.
^ Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer : Lecture: Statistical Testing. (PDF) University of Siegen , p. 33 , accessed on August 8, 2018 .
↑ Fang Jing Blog. Retrieved May 18, 2015 .
↑ Stack Exchange entry. Retrieved May 18, 2015 .

[1] Duden. German universal dictionary. The comprehensive dictionary of meanings in contemporary German. 8th, revised and expanded edition. Edited by the von Duden editorial team. Dudenverlag, Berlin 2015, p. 188.

[2] Pierer's Universal Lexikon, Volume 1. Altenburg 1857, p. 850, keyword Asteriscus ( at zeno.org )

[3] Anonymous: principles of heraldry or heraldic art . 2 (Wapen Art). Pützische Buchhandlung, Cologne 1779, Chur Hanover, p. 58 .

[4] Stephan Kekule von Stradonitz: About the use of an international auxiliary language for genealogical research . In: Mitteilungen der Zentralstelle für Deutschen Personen- und Familiengeschichte , 6th issue, Leipzig 1910, p. 30. genealogy.net , accessed on August 31, 2010

[5] Friedrich Forssman , Ralf de Jong: Detail typography . 2nd Edition. Hermann Schmidt, Mainz 2004, ISBN 3-87439-642-8 , punctuation marks - everyday special characters, p. 190 .

[6] Walther Multa 32. In: Computer Lexicon. Retrieved July 31, 2012 .

[7] Erich Ruhland: The secretary. A teaching, work and reference work in question and answer. 5th edition, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 144: 60. What does the sum key do? - It prints the result ("Klarstern") and brings the counter back to zero.

[8] Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer : Lecture: Statistical Testing. (PDF) University of Siegen , p. 33 , accessed on August 8, 2018 .

[9] Fang Jing Blog. Retrieved May 18, 2015 .

[10] Stack Exchange entry. Retrieved May 18, 2015 .