Carets

Carets refer to the caret symbol, ^, which is also called a circumflex or hat in some contexts. The symbol has several distinct roles in writing, typography, and computing, and its meaning depends on the setting.

In editing and proofreading, a caret is a mark used to indicate where additional material should be inserted into a text. Writers or editors place the symbol in the margin or between lines, pointing to the insertion point to guide authors on what to add.

In typography, the circumflex is a diacritic placed above certain letters in various languages, for example â, ê, î, ô, û. Although the diacritic is conceptually different from the proofreading caret, the same character shape is used in digital typography, and the diacritic name circumflex is often associated with the symbol’s role in written language.

In computing and mathematics, the caret serves multiple purposes. It is commonly used as an exponentiation operator in calculators and some programming environments (for example, MATLAB). In many programming languages, including C, C++, Java, and Python, the caret denotes bitwise XOR. In regular expressions, the caret anchors a match to the start of a string or line, and when used inside square brackets it can negate the character class. In LaTeX, ^ indicates superscripts in math mode.

Carets should not be confused with carat (a unit of gold weight) or carrot (the vegetable). The three terms are unrelated despite similar pronunciation.