How to type Asterisk
* is Shift + 8, in the same place on US and UK keyboards. Alt + 42 on the numeric keypad produces it on any Windows layout, which is the way in when the keyboard in front of you has no key for it, and * writes it in HTML. Its codepoint is U+002A.
Asterisk
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+002A
- Windows
- Alt + 42
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 42 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | * | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+002A | ASTERISK |
Symbols related to Asterisk
The Unicode code chart points from * to ※ and ⁂.
Other punctuation symbols
* lives in the Basic Latin block (U+0000-U+007F), the original ASCII set: the letters, digits and punctuation printed on a US keyboard. Within Unicode it is classified as Po, a punctuation mark.
What Asterisk is used for
Unicode publishes a second list of names for * in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are star and wildcard. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Asterisk is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What * gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups * with ⁎ (U+204E, Low Asterisk) and ∗ (U+2217, Asterisk Operator). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If Asterisk is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about Asterisk
The standard recognises * under another name as well: star. That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
Unicode annotates * directly. Against U+002A the code chart carries the note “Can have five or six spokes”. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from * to Reference Mark, Asterism, arabic five pointed star (U+066D), low asterisk (U+204E), two asterisks aligned vertically (U+2051) and combining asterisk above (U+20F0). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Asterisk looks nearly right but not quite.
How Asterisk behaves in software
* takes one column in a terminal. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
Every way to write Asterisk
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+002A |
| Decimal | 42 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 2A |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 2A |
| HTML entity | * |
| HTML numeric | * or * |
| CSS | \002A |
| JavaScript | \u002A |
| Python | \u002A |
| URL-encoded | %2A |
| SVG | 002A.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If * needs escaping
* is one byte in ASCII, in UTF-8 and in every code page in common use, so it never arrives corrupted. Its problem is the opposite one: it means something to the software reading it. In HTML it can be written *, in a URL it is %2A, and inside a CSV field, a shell command or a regular expression it has to be quoted or escaped rather than typed plainly. That is also why * is the character people substitute when the one they wanted will not type.