What is an asterism?

An asterism is a typographical symbol consisting of three asterisks placed in a triangle.


It is the symbol below.

It is not a very common symbol. It is sometimes used as a section break. (It’s not uncommon nowadays to see section breaks marked by a line of three, five, or more asterisks – an asterism is perhaps a slightly nicer way of doing this.)

As it is an uncommon symbol, it may not exist in a lot of fonts – meaning that if you want to use it, you’ll need to choose a font that has it.

The name ‘asterism’ is from the astronomical term meaning ‘a group of stars’ (with the word ‘asterisk’ coming from Greek asteriskos, meaning ‘small star’).

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