How to use an asterisk | A brief history that’s old like stars

How to use an asterisk

But first, how do you even pronounce asterisk? It can be tricky, just like espresso or et cetera, but it’s easy when you know how: Split the word in half to sound out. It’s not “aste-rix”, but “aste-risk”.

As far as style goes, here’s how to format them in your copy. Asterisks have a few uses in writing. They’re most commonly used to indicate a footnote containing extra clarifications or information. They can also point to legal disclaimers; express omissions, such as dropping vowels in expletives; and indicate constructions that are ungrammatical. Here are the deets.

Indicating disclaimers and footnotes

• Place asterisks after all punctuation marks, except dashes.

• If you need more than one on a page, I recommend using superscript numbers instead.

Some guides recommend using a single asterisk, double asterisk, dagger, double dagger, then a section sign. (*, **, †, ‡, §.)

If you need more than five citations from there, it’s recommended to double, then triple, these symbols. I think this looks awkward and most folks don’t know the “correct” order anyway.

Ungrammatical constructions

• Asterisks should be placed before a word or phrase to indicate it is ungrammatical.

• Use an asterisk outside parentheses to show the missing word or phrase.

• Use an asterisk inside parentheses to show the errant word or phrase.

See these examples:

Go *(to) your room, and think about what you’ve done.

Go (*to) home, or I’ll call your parents.

Expressing omissions in swear words

• Use an asterisk to replace the first vowel of a swear word.

• For omissions in quotes or to show a passage of time, use ellipses.

Some style guides recommend replacing all vowels with an asterisk, all letters after the first letter with an asterisk, or a grawlix—a string of characters, usually including an asterisk, after the first letter. For clarity, I prefer just replacing the first vowel, but it depends on why you’re censoring the word.

Preferred

• B*stard

Not preferred

• B*st*rd

• B******

• B*&%@#$

A brief history and etymology

Asterisks are as old as the ice age. The earliest sighting of one can be found in a cave painting, but as far as indicating an annotation, its first known use is from around two thousand years ago. That might not be prehistoric, but that’s still pretty old.

Grammarian and scholar of Homeric poetry, Aristarchus of Samothrace, used what he called an asteriskos to indicate duplicate lines in poems. He was a librarian too, after all. Around a similar time, Origen, a Christian scholar, used them to mark missing lines in Hebrew texts.

In terms of the word itself, it’s from late Latin and Ancient Greek, meaning “little star”. The coolest part? The word star is one of the words that shows how English, Greek, Latin, Armenian—and many more languages—are all derivatives of one common ancestor: Indo European.

The word for “star” in all these languages are cognate. Since we evolved, we’ve been captivated by those holes in the sky. So, when you say the word or use this punctuation mark, you’re literally tapping into the history of humanity—and the universe. Nevermind the fact the mark is ice age old… Cool, right?

*h₂stḗr

From *h₂eh₁s- (“to burn”) +‎ *-tḗr (agent noun), so that the result literally meant "glower, shiner".

• Armenian: astł 

• Anatolian: Hstḗrs

• Celtic: sterā 

• Germanic: sternǭ, sternô 

• Hellenic: astḗr

• Hittite: ḫa-aš-te-er 

• Indo-Iranian: Hstā́

• Latin: stēlla

• Old Norse: stjarna