Talk:Asterism (typography)

Symbols in written logic

What's the name for the symbols in written logic that look just like this? Should this article link to them? Tzarius 01:53, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Do you refer to the 3-dots meaning "therefore" [∴] and its partner "because" ]∵] --Mdwyer 16:54, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

This site has reasonable seeming references indicating that the inverted asterism has nothing to do with "because". http://members.aol.com/jeff570/set.html

Upside down

What's the name of the upside-down asterism? I would propose the name Msiretsa. --Abdull 13:39, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Um... yeah. I do not see a unicode entry for the upside down version. Why IS it upside down? I'm going to replace it on the article so it at least looks a little more uniform --Mdwyer 16:54, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

I think this would be a proposed character in Unicode. 46.130.144.210 (talk) 20:31, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

It is an inverted asterism'. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:56, 24 March 2024 (UTC).

Eight days too soon? Or just U+2235 ∵ BECAUSE? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC) I withdraw. I see that Wikisource even has a template for it. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Ambiguity

The article is ambiguous about whether asterisms separate subchapters, divisions smaller than subchapters, or both. — Hippietrail 17:58, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Asterism Usage

Nowadays, which fonts contain the asterism? DaemonDivinus 23:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Example?

Can somebody add an example to this page? it needs one, it's sort of hard to see what it's supposed to do. --Awiseman 04:53, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

As far as I understand, something like this:

He got hit and was knocked unconscious...

⁂

He woke up in a dark alley...

I've seen the *** version used in a few books I've read. Most notably by Wilbur Smith - 62.20.157.245 19:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

A classic 1922 example of asterisms in use has been added as an image. Note that this example also provides an instance of the asterism being obsolete: later editions of the work (not counting facsimiles), of which there are several, all use different symbols for section breaks.Choor monster (talk) 19:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Forest

71.234.222.0 (talk · contribs) removed the following text:

It should not be confused with the similar-looking Chinese character 森, meaning "forest", composed of three "tree" radicals 木 in the same formation.

Edit summary was (When will you ever be able to confuse this with a Chinese Character?)

After reading about the Japanese versions of Animal Crossing games, for one. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 06:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

• Why would anoyone think there was an asterism in the Animal Crossing article? One would have to be rather dense to confuse the two. Do Asterisms exist in Chinese Script? Because of it's obscure status in Roman script, I doubt it. So then, where would you possible encounter both to confuse them? It isn't as if someone would assume that sort of thing. It was really quite unnecessary. JRNorbergé 07:16, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

What do you call an asterism rotated by -30 degrees?

There's a character I see in books a century old and older that is three equal spaced dots (not asterisks) with the first two dots horizontally† aligned and the third dot to the right of the first two and equidistant from both.

Obviously I can't draw it here because I can't find any code or character name for it.

Whatever it is, it should be mentioned on this page as a cross reference similarly to therefore and because. ZoneAlarm5 (talk) 17:19, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

†May be you mean vertically aligned? The way you describe it here is not compatible with Euclidean geometry, I think.. Plus the character you describe consists of dots, and probably resembles therefore sign or because sign. (sorry for the dagger, I do not know how to insert an asterisk without being transformed to bullet)

About the origin of the name

I think this word comes from the word αστερισμός (Asterismōs, constellation in Greek), rather than directly from αστήρ (astēr, star), for obvious reasons having to do with the number of the stars included in the symbol. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkaravel (talk • contribs) 22:39, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Inconsistency between article:Asterism and Article:Therefore sign

In the Asterism article, is says that it should not be interpreted as the therefore sign. However therefore sign states: "The therefore sign is sometimes used as a substitute for an asterism ⁂." Does anyone have an idea of how to solve this inconsistency between the the two articles? Textaural (talk) 01:32, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Image needed

An image of an asterism is needed for those who don't have it in their font (eg me on chrome on android)

I know there's the book page, but there should be a single asterism early on.

md 178.167.254.169 (talk) 11:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

This should be an article for Dinkus.

Asterisms are a type of Dinkus - so this article should be about Dinkuses, with a section inside it for Asterisms. But instead, it's currently an article about Asterisms with a section about Dinkuses. DrAnonymous (talk) 02:56, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Your logic seems inescapable. But let's see if anyone dissents. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I started to reformat the article in preparation for a swap but quickly realised that there is a problem. Yes, an asterism is a type of dinkus but it has other uses too. So 'asterism' really does need its own article. So the next question is this: does Dinkus need its own article? Will it ever amount to more than three lines? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:25, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to me for Dinkus to be a part of this article, it really should be its own article. Tadfafty (talk) 18:11, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The process is described at Wikipedia:Splitting. I had already considered doing it but concluded that it wouldn't be worth the effort for two tiny stubs. But if you are so inclined, go right ahead. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:53, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

For posterity: trying to address the CS1 error in references

Because of both the relatively recent {{Full citation needed}} tag and the CS1 error message, I tried tracking down the necessary data for this reference and couldn't, so I took the (possibly bizarre) step to ask the contributor if he might recall it: § Might you have the full citation data for your contribution to Asterism?

I plan to revisit this in the next couple of weeks to replace the reference if he doesn't!

spida-tarbell 𐡸 (talk • contribs) 07:28, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

i've also taken a look, but nothing yet so far! best of luck, thanks for the attention here Remsense ‥ 论 08:26, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

In the meantime, I'll say where I got it, by restoring the Google Books url. So at least it doesn't look totally made up. (If you track it down, the same error appears at Dinkus for the same reason, so you get two fixes for the price of one.) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:20, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

We can solve the problem with a different source that says the same thing. This WP:BLOG says My own efforts to find the origin of the word dinkus, as I know it, relied in March 2011 on Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary, which said: “A dinkus is a small drawing used in printing to decorate a page, or to break up a block of type. It was coined by an artist on [Sydney’s] The Bulletin magazine in the 1920s, and it is derived from the word dinky, meaning ‘small’. So your Plan B is to find an Australian editor with a subscription at https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/ (not on WikiLibrary, unfortunately). No worries, Bruce! --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:15, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I have just assumed the blogger's good faith (why would they invent a citation) and used it to replace the unsatisfactory citation. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)