U+2042 was added to Unicode in version 1.1 (1993). It belongs to the block General Punctuation in the Basic Multilingual Plane.
This character is a Other Punctuation and is commonly used, that is, in no specific script.
The glyph is not a composition. It has a Neutral East Asian Width. In bidirectional context it acts as Other Neutral and is not mirrored. In text U+2042 behaves as Alphabetic regarding line breaks. It has type Other for sentence and Other for word breaks. The Grapheme Cluster Break is Any.
The Wikipedia has the following information about this codepoint:
In typography, an asterism, from the Greek astēr (star), is a rarely used and nearly obsolete symbol consisting of three asterisks placed in a triangle (⁂). It is used to "indicate minor breaks in text," call attention to a passage, or to separate sub-chapters in a book. It is Unicode character U+2042 ⁂ asterism (HTML ⁂). In Windows it is possible to use the key combination ALT+8258 to produce the character, but it has very limited support in the default fonts (Arial Unicode MS / Lucida Sans Unicode / MS Mincho).
Often, this symbol is replaced with three consecutive asterisks (called a dinkus), more than three asterisks, or three or more 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 can also be used to mean 'untitled' or author or title withheld, for example, some editions of Album for the Young by composer Robert Schumann (no.'s 21, 26, and 30). Besides originating from the same word, "the rarely used asteriscus, which Isidore of Seville says 'is put in place of something that has been omitted so as to call attention to the omission'," also resembles the asterism. In meteorology, an asterism in a station model indicates moderate snowfall.
The asterism should not be confused with the similar looking therefore sign—U+2234 ∴ therefore (HTML ∴ · ∴)—which is composed of three round dots rather than asterisks.
System | Representation |
---|---|
Nº | 8258 |
UTF-8 | E2 81 82 |
UTF-16 | 20 42 |
UTF-32 | 00 00 20 42 |
URL-Quoted | %E2%81%82 |
HTML-Escape | ⁂ |
Wrong windows-1252 Mojibake | â |
Property | Value |
---|---|
Age (age) | 1.1 |
Unicode Name (na) | ASTERISM |
Unicode 1 Name (na1) | — |
Block (blk) | Punctuation |
General Category (gc) | Other Punctuation |
Script (sc) | Common |
Bidirectional Category (bc) | Other Neutral |
Combining Class (ccc) | Not Reordered |
Decomposition Type (dt) | None |
Decomposition Mapping (dm) |
|
Lowercase (Lower) | ✘ |
Simple Lowercase Mapping (slc) |
|
Lowercase Mapping (lc) |
|
Uppercase (Upper) | ✘ |
Simple Uppercase Mapping (suc) |
|
Uppercase Mapping (uc) |
|
Simple Titlecase Mapping (stc) |
|
Titlecase Mapping (tc) |
|
Case Folding (cf) |
|
ASCII Hex Digit (AHex) | ✘ |
Alphabetic (Alpha) | ✘ |
Bidi Control (Bidi_C) | ✘ |
Bidi Mirrored (Bidi_M) | ✘ |
Bidi Paired Bracket (bpb) |
|
Bidi Paired Bracket Type (bpt) | None |
Cased (Cased) | ✘ |
Composition Exclusion (CE) | ✘ |
Case Ignorable (CI) | ✘ |
Full Composition Exclusion (Comp_Ex) | ✘ |
Changes When Casefolded (CWCF) | ✘ |
Changes When Casemapped (CWCM) | ✘ |
Changes When NFKC Casefolded (CWKCF) | ✘ |
Changes When Lowercased (CWL) | ✘ |
Changes When Titlecased (CWT) | ✘ |
Changes When Uppercased (CWU) | ✘ |
Dash (Dash) | ✘ |
Deprecated (Dep) | ✘ |
Default Ignorable Code Point (DI) | ✘ |
Diacritic (Dia) | ✘ |
East Asian Width (ea) | Neutral |
Extender (Ext) | ✘ |
FC NFKC Closure (FC_NFKC) |
|
Grapheme Cluster Break (GCB) | Any |
Grapheme Base (Gr_Base) | ✔ |
Grapheme Extend (Gr_Ext) | ✘ |
Grapheme Link (Gr_Link) | ✘ |
Hex Digit (Hex) | ✘ |
Hangul Syllable Type (hst) | Not Applicable |
Hyphen (Hyphen) | ✘ |
ID Continue (IDC) | ✘ |
Ideographic (Ideo) | ✘ |
ID Start (IDS) | ✘ |
IDS Binary Operator (IDSB) | ✘ |
IDS Trinary Operator and (IDST) | ✘ |
InMC (InMC) | — |
Indic Positional Category (InPC) | NA |
Indic Syllabic Category (InSC) | Other |
ISO 10646 Comment (isc) | — |
Joining Group (jg) | No_Joining_Group |
Join Control (Join_C) | ✘ |
Jamo Short Name (JSN) | — |
Joining Type (jt) | Non Joining |
Line Break (lb) | Alphabetic |
Logical Order Exception (LOE) | ✘ |
Math (Math) | ✘ |
Noncharacter Code Point (NChar) | ✘ |
NFC Quick Check (NFC_QC) | Yes |
NFD Quick Check (NFD_QC) | Yes |
NFKC Casefold (NFKC_CF) |
|
NFKC Quick Check (NFKC_QC) | Yes |
NFKD Quick Check (NFKD_QC) | Yes |
Numeric Type (nt) | None |
Numeric Value (nv) | NaN |
Other Alphabetic (OAlpha) | ✘ |
Other Default Ignorable Code Point (ODI) | ✘ |
Other Grapheme Extend (OGr_Ext) | ✘ |
Other ID Continue (OIDC) | ✘ |
Other ID Start (OIDS) | ✘ |
Other Lowercase (OLower) | ✘ |
Other Math (OMath) | ✘ |
Other Uppercase (OUpper) | ✘ |
Pattern Syntax (Pat_Syn) | ✔ |
Pattern White Space (Pat_WS) | ✘ |
Quotation Mark (QMark) | ✘ |
Radical (Radical) | ✘ |
Sentence Break (SB) | Other |
Simple Case Folding (scf) |
|
Script Extension (scx) | Common |
Soft Dotted (SD) | ✘ |
STerm (STerm) | ✘ |
Terminal Punctuation (Term) | ✘ |
Unified Ideograph (UIdeo) | ✘ |
Variation Selector (VS) | ✘ |
Word Break (WB) | Other |
White Space (WSpace) | ✘ |
XID Continue (XIDC) | ✘ |
XID Start (XIDS) | ✘ |
Expands On NFC (XO_NFC) | ✘ |
Expands On NFD (XO_NFD) | ✘ |
Expands On NFKC (XO_NFKC) | ✘ |
Expands On NFKD (XO_NFKD) | ✘ |