Arabic star
Punctuation mark used for Arabic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Arabic star is a punctuation mark added to Unicode 1.1[1] by political and cultural reasons to use it in typing instead of asterisk (U+002A * ASTERISK), which might take a six-lobed form (✻) in some typesets reminding a six-pointed Star of David (✡) or might be even mistaken for it in a print of poor quality.[2][3]
| ٭ | |
|---|---|
Arabic star | |
| U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR |
The Arabic star is given a distinct character in Unicode, U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR (the note "appearance rather variable" was added in Unicode 5.1[4]), in the range Arabic punctuation.[5] Despite its name, the character might take an eight-lobed form in some typesets, which could be related to octagram shape of the Rub el Hizb sign (۞).
Variants
In many modern fonts, however, the asterisk is five- or six-pointed, and the Arabic star is sometimes six- or eight-pointed. The two symbols are compared below (the display depends on your browser's default sans-serif font).
| Asterisk | Full-width Asterisk | Arabic star | five-pointed star | six-pointed star | eight-pointed star |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| * | ＊ | ٭ | ★ | ✶ | ✴ |
Unicode
In Unicode, Arabic and similar stars are encoded at:
- U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR
- U+06DE ۞ ARABIC START OF RUB EL HIZB
In some displays, the use of the ٭ character can cause the text directionality to change.[6]
