ASTERISK

An asterisk is a typographic symbol represented by the character *. It is commonly called a star. The term derives from the Greek asteriskos, meaning "little star". The shape and name date to early writing systems and printing, where asterisks were used as reference marks.

In publishing and editing, the asterisk serves to signal a footnote or endnote. It can mark editorial insertions or omissions in manuscripts, and it is used to indicate corrections in proofreading. In some contexts it also acts as a censoring device, masking parts of a word or name.

In linguistics and philology, an asterisk prefixes certain forms to denote reconstructed or hypothetical forms, or to flag forms that are ungrammatical or not attested. In general text, asterisks are also used to emphasize text, though this is less formal.

In computing and information technology, the asterisk has several roles. It is a wildcard character in file systems and search patterns, matching any sequence of characters. In programming and mathematics, * commonly denotes multiplication; in C-like languages it declares pointers and is used for dereferencing; in many languages it forms the Kleene star in regular expressions, meaning zero or more repetitions. In SQL and other query languages, * selects all columns. On keyboards, the asterisk is produced by Shift+8 on many layouts and is encoded as Unicode U+002A.

The asterisk thus functions as a versatile symbol across writing, linguistics, and computing.