www.alphadictionary.com

This came up in examination of Beck's Septentrional (a post containing a whole cornucopia of good word suggestions but I'll leave that to him)...

Asterism- (n)

1. Printing Three asterisks in a triangular formation used to call attention to a following passage.
2. Astronomy A cluster of stars smaller than a constellation.
3. Mineralogy A six-rayed starlike figure optically produced in some crystal structures by reflected or transmitted light.

(freedictionary)

I like the example of a #1 asterism I just saw. Two on top, one below, in between the top two. A starry eyed emoticon, with a kiss. Too bad our Agora software doesn't let us do it.

It looks a bit ape-ish as it comes out here, but move the lower asterisk over a bit in your mind, and you'll get the picture.

**
*

How's this for a closer approximation?
"You have to understand how a starship operates."
-- Capt. Kirk, Star Trek II: The Wrathe of Khan"


My guess is that in classical printing it's a single piece of type, equivalent to a single character in computer word processing.

AHA! HERE 'tis! ... ⁂
It's really small ( ⁂ ) unless you use the Font Size tag to enlarge the character. A 29 is the largest number accepted for the font size.

How's this for a closer approximation?

Code: Select all

* * * * or * *

"You have to understand how a starship operates."
-- Capt. Kirk, Star Trek II: The Wrathe of Khan"


My guess is that in classical printing it's a single piece of type, equivalent to a single character in computer word processing.

AHA! HERE 'tis! ... ⁂
It's really small ( ⁂ ) unless you use the Font Size tag to enlarge the character. A 29 is the largest number accepted for the font size.

Interesting, thanks for finding it. Too bad I've never figured out how to use Unicode.

By the way, is that a take-off on the original Star Trek II?