The ✽ (Heavy Teardrop Asterisk): Meaning, Usage & History
The ✽ (Heavy Teardrop Asterisk) is a decorative typographic symbol used to add a touch of floral elegance to text. Distinct from a standard asterisk, this eight-pointed symbol features teardrop-shaped arms radiating from the center. Found in the Unicode Dingbats block, it is commonly used as a stylized bullet point, a decorative text divider, or an aesthetic accent in digital design and publishing.
This elegant character holds the Unicode code point U+273D and lives within the Dingbats block. Its roots trace back to traditional typesetting, specifically the iconic ITC Zapf Dingbats font created by Hermann Zapf in the late 1970s. Before the era of emojis and digital text, printers used symbols like the Heavy Teardrop Asterisk to break up long blocks of text or create visually appealing lists. When the Unicode Standard was established, these physical typography ornaments were digitized, preserving their charm for modern computer users.
Today, the ✽ symbol shines primarily in decorative typography and aesthetic social media posts. You will often spot it in Instagram bios, Tumblr blogs, and carefully curated text posts where standard bullet points feel too boring. Unlike the standard asterisk (*), which serves functional roles in programming for multiplication or in editing to mark footnotes, the Heavy Teardrop Asterisk is almost purely ornamental. It brings a soft, botanical vibe to digital text, making it a favorite for lifestyle brands, wedding invitations, and creative writers looking to gracefully separate scenes or thoughts.
Typing the ✽ symbol directly from a standard keyboard isn't possible, but you can easily insert it using a few tricks. On a Windows PC, you can copy it from the Character Map app. Mac users can find it in the Character Viewer by pressing Control + Command + Space and searching for "teardrop asterisk." For most mobile users, the quickest method is simply copying and pasting the symbol from a webpage, or setting up a custom text replacement shortcut in your phone's keyboard settings so that a keyword like "*star" automatically transforms into the ✽.
If you love the look of the ✽, there are several related dingbats to explore in the Unicode library. The standard Asterisk (*) is its strictly functional cousin. For variations on the floral typographic theme, you might look at the Teardrop-Spoked Asterisk (✢) or the Open Centre Teardrop Asterisk (✾), both of which offer slightly different stroke weights and internal geometries. Together, these symbols provide a versatile toolkit for anyone looking to dress up their digital text.