Asterism (typography)

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In typography, an asterism is a rarely used symbol consisting of three asterisks placed in a triangle (⁂). It is used to call attention to a passage or to separate subchapters in a book. It is Unicode character U+2042: [⁂].

Often, this symbol is replaced with three, sometimes more, consecutive asterisks or dots. 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 should not be confused with ∴ (Unicode character U+2234), the similar-looking therefore sign, which is composed of three round dots.

[edit] LaTeX

In LaTeX, a construct like the following can be used to define an \asterism command:

 \newcommand{\asterism}{\smash{% 
    \raisebox{-.5ex}{% 
      \setlength{\tabcolsep}{-.5pt}% 
      \begin{tabular}{@{}cc@{}}% 
        \multicolumn2c*\\[-2ex]*&*% 
      \end{tabular}}}}

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