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Concept
Asterisk
Summary
The asterisk (ˈæstərɪsk ), from Late Latin asteriscus, from Ancient Greek ἀστερίσκος, asteriskos, "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra). An asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in print and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten, though more complex forms exist. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words.
In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication.
The asterisk was already in use as a symbol in ice age cave paintings. There is also a two-thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the asteriskos, , which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is known to have also used the asteriskos to mark missing Hebrew lines from his Hexapla. 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. 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 character dingir, , though this hypothesis seems to only be based on visual appearance.
Wordfilter
When toning down expletives, asterisks are often used to replace letters. For example, the word "badword" might become "bard", "bd", "b****" or even "". Vowels tend to be censored with an asterisk more than consonants, but the intelligibility of censored profanities with multiple syllables such as "bdwrd" and "bd" or "ba****d", or uncommon ones is higher if put in context with surrounding text.
When a document containing classified information is published, the document may be "sanitized" (redacted) by replacing the classified information with asterisks.
Official source
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