How to type Asterism
To type Asterism (⁂), press Alt + 8258 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ⁂ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2042 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2042 on Linux, or 2042 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Asterism
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2042
- Windows
- Alt + 8258 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8258 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ⁂ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2042 | ASTERISM |
Other punctuation symbols
⁂ lives in the General Punctuation block (U+2000-U+206F), dashes, quotation marks, spaces and reference marks used across languages. Within Unicode it is classified as Po, a punctuation mark.
What Asterism 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 dinkus and stars. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Asterism is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
How Asterism 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 Asterism
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2042 |
| Decimal | 8258 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 81 82 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 20 42 |
| HTML entity | ⁂ |
| HTML numeric | ⁂ or ⁂ |
| CSS | \2042 |
| JavaScript | \u2042 |
| Python | \u2042 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%81%82 |
| SVG | 2042.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ⁂ arrives as â�‚
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 81 82 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.