star

In printing, a star is a typographic mark, most commonly the asterisk (*), used to call out information, create footnote references, or highlight content on a printed page. The symbol gets its name from its visual resemblance to a celestial star, though in practice the simple five- or six-pointed asterisk remains the workhorse of the trade. Other variants exist: the dagger (†), double dagger (‡), section mark (§), and decorative stars (★, ☆, ✪) all serve similar functions, but the asterisk is by far the most widely available and expected in general commercial printing.

Stars function primarily as reference markers. A superscript asterisk placed after a word or phrase on the main text anchors the reader to a corresponding mark at the bottom of the page, in a margin, or at the end of a section. This allows printers to deliver supplementary information, corrections, disclaimers, or attributions without interrupting the flow of the main body text. Multiple stars in sequence (*, **, ***, and so on) let a single page carry several independent notes without confusion, though best practice limits this to three or four before shifting to numbered footnotes.

Practical use and placement

The asterisk is set as a superscript, raised above the baseline and typically reduced to 60 to 70 percent of the body text size. Placement is critical: it should sit immediately after the relevant word or punctuation mark with no space between them. In justified text, the corresponding mark at the foot of the page must align clearly with the note itself. The risk of loss or misalignment increases when stars appear in tabular material or narrow columns, where space constraints force tighter leading and can cause the superscript to collide with descenders in the line above.

Material science and production constraints matter here. In letterpress and hot metal composition, the asterisk was cast as a separate piece of metal type; loss or damage to these small characters was common. In digital typesetting and offset printing, the asterisk is embedded in the font file, but its rendering depends on the weight, family, and optical size of the typeface in use. An asterisk designed for 12-point body text may appear too light or too heavy when reduced to 8-point superscript in a footnote, requiring manual adjustment of the type weight or letter spacing for clarity.

Within the wider hierarchy of reference symbols, the asterisk ranks first. Typographic convention dictates the order when multiple note markers appear in a single document: asterisk, dagger, double dagger, section mark, then paragraph mark, then superior numerals. In academic and trade publishing, numbered footnotes have largely replaced stars for formal citation, but asterisks remain the standard for editorial notes, corrections, and call-outs in commercial work, packaging, and tables. The asterisk's simplicity and ubiquity make it the most resilient choice across print media and digital reproduction.