Editing Asterisk (section)

==History==

[[File:Asteriskos.jpg|thumb|The asteriskos used in an early Greek papyrus.]]

[[File:Asteriskos.gif|thumb|Early asterisks seen in the margin of Greek papyrus.]]

[[File:Midrashasteriscus.jpg|thumb|<ref name="r151">{{cite web | title=Jewish Gnosticism, merkabah mysticism, and Talmudic tradition : Scholem, Gershom, 1897-1982 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive | website=Internet Archive | date=2023-03-25 | url=https://archive.org/details/jewishgnosticism0000scho/page/70/mode/2up?view=theater | access-date=2024-05-21}}</ref>]]

The asterisk was already in use as a symbol in [[ice age]] [[Cave painting|cave paintings]].<ref>{{cite web
 |url=https://ideas.ted.com/what-the-mysterious-symbols-made-by-early-humans-can-teach-us-about-how-we-evolved/
 |title=32 mysterious symbols made by early humans
 |last=D'Arcy
 |first=Patrick
 |date=June 7, 2017
 |website=ted.com
 |access-date=June 2, 2019
 |archive-date=June 2, 2019
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190602094828/https://ideas.ted.com/what-the-mysterious-symbols-made-by-early-humans-can-teach-us-about-how-we-evolved/
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref> There is also a two-thousand-year-old character used by [[Aristarchus of Samothrace]] called the {{lang|el|asteriskos}}, {{char|[[※]]}}, which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated.<ref>Kathleen McNamee, "Sigla," in ''Sigla and Select Marginalia in Greek Literary Papyri'' (Brussels: Fondation Egyptologique Reine Elisabeth, 1992), 9.</ref> [[Origen]] is known to have also used the asteriskos to mark missing [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] lines from his [[Hexapla]].<ref>McNamee, "Sigla," 12.</ref> The asterisk evolved in shape over time, but its meaning as a symbol used to correct defects remained.

In the Middle Ages, the asterisk was used to emphasize a particular part of text, often linking those parts of the text to a marginal comment.<ref>Parkes, "The Technology of Printing and the Stabilization of the Symbols," 50-64.</ref> However, an asterisk was not always used.

One hypothesis to the origin of the asterisk is that it stems from the 5000-year-old [[Sumerian language|Sumerian]] character [[dingir]], {{char|𒀭}},<ref>Robert Bringhurst, "Asterisk," in ''The Elements of Typographic Style: Version 3.2'' (Vancouver, BC: Hartley & Marks, 2008), 303.</ref> though this hypothesis seems to only be based on visual appearance.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Shady Characters|last=Houston|first=Keith|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.|year=2013|isbn=978-1-846-14647-3|page=98}}</ref>