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 (HTML: ⁂). In Windows it is possible to use the key combination ALT+8258 to produce the character, but it has very limited support in the default fonts (Arial Unicode MS / Lucida Sans Unicode / MS Mincho).
Often, this symbol is replaced with three consecutive asterisks (called a dinkus[4]), more than three asterisks, or three or more 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).[5] Besides originating from the same word, "the rarely used asteriscus (܍), 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.
LaTeX [edit]
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.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ a b Alexander Humez, Nicholas D. Humez (2008). On the Dot: The Speck That Changed the World, p.72 & 186n. ISBN 978-0-19-532499-0.
- ^ a b Radim Peško, Louis Lüthi (2007). Dot Dot Dot 13, p.193. Stuart Bailey, Peter Bilak, eds. ISBN 978-90-77620-07-6.
- ^ Hudson, Robert (2010). The Christian Writer's Manual of Style, p.396. ISBN 978-0-310-86136-2.
- ^ Lundmark, Torbjorn Quirky Qwerty: A Biography of the Keyboard (2002)
- ^ Taruskin, Richard (2005). The Oxford history of western music, Volume 3, p.311. ISBN 978-0-19-516979-9.
 |
This typography-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
