The Complete Guide to the ✲ (Open Centre Asterisk) Symbol
The ✲ (Open Centre Asterisk) is a decorative typographical character distinguished by its hollow, unshaded middle. Residing at Unicode code point U+2732, this symbol belongs to the Dingbats block. It serves as a visually striking alternative to the standard text asterisk, widely used to add aesthetic flair to lists, section breaks, and social media profiles.
Introduced in Unicode version 1.1 back in 1993, the Open Centre Asterisk traces its digital roots to the legendary ITC Zapf Dingbats font. Renowned typeface designer Hermann Zapf created this collection in the late 1970s to provide printers and designers with high-quality typographic ornaments. When the digital era arrived, these dingbats were incorporated into the Unicode Standard. This transition ensured that delicate, stylized marks like ✲ could be displayed uniformly across modern computers, smartphones, and web browsers.
While the standard asterisk (*) carries heavy responsibilities in mathematics for multiplication and in programming languages for pointers or wildcards, the Open Centre Asterisk is strictly a design element. You will rarely find it executing code or calculating formulas. Instead, it shines in aesthetic contexts. Internet users frequently deploy ✲ in Instagram bios, TikTok captions, and text-based art to achieve specific online aesthetics like Y2K, fairycore, or minimalist typography. In professional publishing and web design, typographers use this character to create elegant bulleted lists or group three of them together to form a decorative dinkus (a specialized typographic symbol used to break up text sections).
Typing the ✲ symbol requires a few specific shortcuts depending on your platform. On a Mac, enable the Unicode Hex Input keyboard, hold down the Option key, and type 2732. Windows users can hold the Alt key and type 10034 on their numeric keypad. If you are building a website, you can insert it into your HTML using the code `✲` or `✲`. For mobile users on iOS or Android, the most efficient method is to copy and paste the symbol directly from the web, or set up a custom text replacement shortcut in your device's keyboard settings.
The Unicode Standard offers an entire garden of asterisk variations. The Open Centre Asterisk stands out because its hollow core gives it a lighter, almost floral quality. It contrasts sharply with the Heavy Asterisk (✱), which features thick, solid strokes, and the standard Asterisk (*), which is smaller and positioned higher on the text line. Whether you are dressing up a digital diary or designing an indie zine, the ✲ symbol offers a perfect blend of vintage typographic charm and modern internet aesthetic.