Arabic star
- For stars with Arabic names, see List of Arabic star names.
| ٭ | |
|---|---|
Arabic star | |
| U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR |
The Arabic star is a punctuation mark developed to be distinct from the asterisk (*). The asterisk had existed in feudal times, and the original shape of the asterisk was six-pointed, each point like a teardrop coming from the center. However, some typewriters had difficulty printing the six arms distinctly.
The Arabic star is given a distinct character in Unicode, U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR (noted: "Appearance rather variable"), in the range Arabic punctuation.[1]
Variants
In many modern fonts, however, the asterisk is five-pointed, and the Arabic star is sometimes six- or eight-pointed. The two symbols are compared below (the display depends on your browser's font).
| Asterisk | Full-width Asterisk | Arabic star | five-pointed star | six-pointed star | eight-pointed star |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| * | ＊ | ٭ | ★ | ✶ | ✴ |
Unicode
In Unicode, Arabic and similar stars are encoded at:
- U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR
- U+06DE ۞ ARABIC START OF RUB EL HIZB
In some displays, the use of the ٭ character can cause the text directionality to change.[2]
See also
References
External links
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