Asterism (typography)
In typography, an asterism, from the Greek astēr ('star'),[1] is a rarely used, and "nearly obsolete,"[2] symbol consisting of three asterisks placed in a triangle (⁂). It is used to, "indicate minor breaks in text,"[3] call attention to a passage, or to separate sub-chapters in a book. It is Unicode character U+2042 ⁂ asterism (8258decimal).
Often, this symbol is replaced with three, sometimes more, consecutive asterisks or dots.[2] Otherwise, an extra space between paragraphs is used. An asterism or its analogue may be used in conjunction with the extra space to mark a smaller subdivision than a subchapter.
It can also be used to mean 'untitled' or author or title withheld, for example, some editions of Album for the Young by composer Robert Schumann (no.'s 21, 26, and 30).[4] Besides originating from the same word, "the rarely used asteriscus ([omitted]), which Isidore of Seville (p. 48) says 'is put in place of something that has been omitted so as to call attention to the omission'," also resembles the asterism.[1]
The asterism should not be confused with the similar looking therefore sign — U+2234 ∴ therefore (HTML: ∴ ∴) — which is composed of three round dots rather than asterisks.
[edit] LaTeX
In the typesetting language LaTeX, an asterism can be defined as a command by inserting something similar to the code below in the LaTeX document's ‘preamble’:
\newcommand{\asterism}{{\footnotesize \smash{% \raisebox{-.2ex}{% \setlength{\tabcolsep}{0.5pt}% \begin{tabular}{@{}cc@{}}% \multicolumn2c*\\[-1.5ex] *&*% \end{tabular}}}}}
An asterism can then be inserted in the body of a document by using the \asterism command.
[edit] Sources
- ^ a b Alexander Humez, Nicholas D. Humez (2008). On the Dot: The Speck That Changed the World, p.72 & 186n. ISBN 9780195324990.
- ^ a b Radim Peško, Louis Lüthi (2007). Dot Dot Dot 13, p.193. Stuart Bailey, Peter Bilak, eds. ISBN 9789077620076.
- ^ Hudson, Robert (2010). The Christian Writer's Manual of Style, p.396. ISBN 9780310861362.
- ^ Taruskin, Richard (2005). The Oxford history of western music, Volume 3, p.311. ISBN 9780195169799.
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