Asterism (typography)

All you want to know about Asterism (typography)

⁂

Word dividers

apostrophe			( ’ ' )
brackets	(( )), ([ ]), ({ }), (< >)
colon			( : )
comma			( , )
dashes	( ‒, –, —, ― )
ellipses			( …, ... )
exclamation mark			( ! )
full stop (period)			( . )
guillemets			( « » )
hyphen			( -, ‐ )
question mark			( ? )
quotation marks		( ‘ ’, “ ” )
semicolon			( ; )
slash/stroke			( / )
solidus			( ⁄ )
spaces	( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (␠)
interpunct			( · )
General typography
ampersand			( & )
at sign			( @ )
asterisk			( * )
backslash			( \ )
bullet			( • )
caret			( ^ )
currency	generic:	( ¤ )
currency	specific:	¢, $, €, £, ¥, ₩, ₪
daggers		( †, ‡ )
degree			( ° )
inverted exclamation mark			( ¡ )
inverted question mark			( ¿ )
number sign			( # )
numero sign			( № )
percent (etc.)		( %, ‰, ‱ )
pilcrow			( ¶ )
prime			( ′ )
section sign			( § )
tilde/swung dash			( ~ )
umlaut/diaeresis			( ¨ )
underscore/understrike			( _ )
vertical/pipe/broken bar			( \|, ¦ )
Uncommon typography
asterism			( ⁂ )
index/fist			( ☞ )
therefore sign			( ∴ )
because sign			( ∵ )
interrobang			( ‽ )
irony mark			( ⸮ )
lozenge			( ◊ )
reference mark			( ※ )

v • d • e

For other uses of this term, please refer to Asterism disambiguation page.

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 sub-chapters 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.

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}}}}