The Arabic star is a punctuation mark added to Unicode 1.1[1] because the asterisk (*) might appear similar to a Star of David in its six-lobed form (✻).[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]
Variants
editIn many modern fonts, however, the asterisk is five-pointed, and the Arabic star is sometimes six- or eight-pointed. The two symbols are compared below (the display depends on your browser's font).
| Asterisk | Full-width Asterisk | Arabic star | five-pointed star | six-pointed star | eight-pointed star |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| * | ＊ | ٭ | ★ | ✶ | ✴ |
Unicode
editIn 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]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Unicode 1.1 appendix H § 5.4.3: ‘٭’
[066D]arabic five pointed star’ - ^ Fonts & Encodings by Yannis Haralambous, page 73: ‘There is nothing inherently Arabic about the character ‘٭’
0x066Darabic five pointed star; it was provided only to ensure that a five-pointed asterisk would be available, as the ordinary asterisk ‘*’, with its six lobes, might be mistaken for a Star of David in print of poor quality.’ - ^ Kenneth Whistler, who was secretary of the Unicode Technical Committee around the time this character was added later wrote: ‘U+066D is a politically motivated addition for Arabic, which always retains its 5-pointed form, so as not to be reminiscent in any way of the Star of David.’
- ^ Unicode 5.1 chart Arabic
- ^ Chart U+0600 Arabic
- ^ Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm
External links
edit- Windows Programming/Unicode/Character reference/0000-0FFF
- Star Symbol Archived 2021-04-02 at the Wayback Machine
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