The Eight Spoked Asterisk ✳: History, Meaning, and Usage
The Eight Spoked Asterisk (✳) is a typographical symbol featuring eight straight lines radiating from a central point. Officially designated as U+2733 in the Unicode standard, this star-like character serves as a decorative variation of the standard asterisk, frequently used in graphic design, bulleted lists, and text formatting to elegantly draw attention or separate ideas.
Originating from traditional print typography, printers historically used dingbats and ornamental asterisks to add visual flair to published works and separate sections of text. Today, the symbol lives in the Dingbats Unicode block, a collection of decorative characters added to the standard in 1991. Its exact Unicode code point is U+2733.
Unlike the standard five- or six-pointed asterisk (*) universally used in programming for multiplication or in text to indicate footnotes, the eight-spoked version is primarily aesthetic. In typography and graphic design, it acts as a striking bullet point or a subtle section break. On social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, users sprinkle the ✳ symbol into captions, comments, or bios to add a minimalist touch of sparkle. It helps emphasize a specific text aesthetic without relying on the brightly colored, heavily stylized emojis typical of modern keyboards. It rarely appears in mathematics or coding, reserving its utility strictly for visual formatting.
Typing the ✳ symbol takes a slightly different approach depending on your operating system. On Windows, press the Windows key + . (period) to open the emoji and symbol picker, then search for "asterisk" in the symbols menu. Mac users can press Control + Command + Space to launch the Character Viewer and search for "eight spoked asterisk." On mobile devices, you can sometimes find it in the extended symbols section of your emoji keyboard, but the quickest method is often to copy and paste it directly from a webpage.
The eight spoked asterisk shares visual DNA with several other typographic characters. It differs heavily from the standard asterisk (*, U+002A), which is smaller, fewer-spoked, and functionally distinct in computing. It also looks similar to the Sparkle emoji (❇️), though the sparkle often renders with a bright green background or a 3D effect on modern smartphones. The ✳ remains a simple, clean, and classic monochromatic element, perfect for elevating everyday text.