Image: Wikimedia Commons

asterisk

Typographical symbol or glyph (U+002A)

EntityUnicode character glyphQ190212

Also known as ASTERISK · * · star

Instance of: Unicode character
, glyph
Subclass of: sign

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

The asterisk, *, is a typographical symbol that is a stylised image of a star. An asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in print and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten, though more complex forms exist. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor words considered offensive. It is often vocalized as star, especially by computer scientists and mathematicians.

Overview

All data

34 statements · 35% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Unicode character: *
HTML entity: &ast;
1
Sources
1.html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/named-characters.html
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&midast;
1
Sources
1.html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/named-characters.html
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*
1
Sources
1.html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#character-references
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*
1
Sources
1.html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#character-references
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Different from: star
Unicode code point: 002A
Homoglyph: ٭
1
Sources
1.Stated in Unicode 13.0unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ucd/NamesList.txt
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⁎
1
Sources
1.Stated in Unicode 13.0unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ucd/NamesList.txt
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∗
1
Sources
1.Stated in Unicode 13.0unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ucd/NamesList.txt
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⚹
1
Sources
1.Stated in Unicode 13.0unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ucd/NamesList.txt
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ᕯ
1
Sources
1.Stated in Unicode 13.0unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ucd/NamesList.txt
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Unicode block: Basic Latin
Unicode character name: ASTERISK
1
Sources
1.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/NamesList.txt
View statement on Wikidata ↗

On other databases

15 identifiers linking asterisk across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

35%

externally sourced

Source last edited August 16, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). asterisk (Q190212). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/asterisk-Q190212