Quote:
Originally Posted by skb
I thought initially that the asterism was a "therefore" sign thingy that I used to use a lot in my previous life in science/engineering
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The
therefore symbol is Unicode U+2234:
∴
which is three dots in a triangle (not asterisks).
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I don't expect to use an asterism for scene breaks, but now I know the word I'm sure to find somewhere where I can use one just so I can point it out to people.  |
You could read up a little bit more about it on the Graphic Design Stack Exchange:
https://graphicdesign.stackexchange....sm-right/55735
... but I would probably not include it in ebooks. I doubt many fonts have the actual asterism character ⁂.
Also, if you ever run across any strange punctuation, there is this fantastic book
Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston.
Chapter 6: The Asterisk and the Dagger:
Quote:
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The parallel trajectories of the asterisk and dagger, from the scrolls of ancient Alexandria to today’s books, newspapers, and comics, are littered with typographic footnotes of their own. Along the way the asterisk has spawned the “asterism” (⁂), named for a constellation of stars and used as late as the 1850s to indicate a “note of considerable length, which has no reference,” and also the descriptively named but enigmatic “two asterisks aligned vertically” (⁑) that lurks in Unicode’s unplumbed depths. The dagger, on the other hand, gave rise to a junior partner of its own in the form of the double dagger, or “diesis” (‡), originally used to indicate a small change in musical tone but that has now graduated to be an established reference symbol in its own right. Few other marks have survived quite so long as this pair, and their marriage is as strong as ever. Our texts will continue to be illuminated by little stars and our hyperbole punctured by sobering daggers for years to come.
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It also points to this Footnote:
Quote:
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77. “Unicode Character ‘TWO ASTERISKS ALIGNED VERTICALLY’ (U+2051),” FileFormat.info, http://www.fileformat.info/info/unic...2051/index.htm [last accessed May 30, 2012]; C.W. Butterfield, “Of the Asterism,” in A Comprehensive System of Grammatical and Rhetorical Punctuation: Designed for the Use of Schools (Cincinnati, OH: Longley, 1858), 37; Oxford English Dictionary, “Asterism, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/12124 [last accessed August 27, 2012].
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