Comment on How did marking corrections with the astrisk originate?

bran_buckler@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Noting a correction is part of a larger scope of annotating something. From Wikipedia:

There is also a two-thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the asteriskos, ※, which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is known to have also used the asteriskos to mark missing Hebrew lines from his Hexapla. The asterisk evolved in shape over time, but its meaning as a symbol used to correct defects remained.

In the Middle Ages, the asterisk was used to emphasize a particular part of text, often linking those parts of the text to a marginal comment. However, an asterisk was not always used.

Aristarchus of Samothrace was from c. 220 – c. 143 BC, so it’s been used to notation since at least then!

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