ἀστερίσκος

Aristarchus of Samothrace, head librarian at Alexandria around 150 BCE, needed a way to mark lines in Homer that he suspected were later interpolations — passages inserted by copyists rather than composed by the poet. He chose a small star: the asteriskos (ἀστερίσκος), a diminutive of aster (star). A starred line was not necessarily wrong, but it was suspect. The asterisk was born as a mark of scholarly doubt.

Origen of Alexandria, the 3rd-century Christian theologian, adapted the asterisk for his Hexapla — a six-column comparison of different Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible. Where the Greek text had additions not found in the Hebrew, Origen marked them with an asterisk. The star migrated from literary criticism to scriptural scholarship, still meaning the same thing: "this passage may not belong here."

Medieval scribes carried the asterisk into manuscript culture, where it served as a general reference mark — pointing readers to marginal notes, corrections, and glosses. When printing arrived in the 1400s, the asterisk became one of the standard symbols for footnotes, ranked first in the traditional sequence: *, †, ‡, §. The star that once questioned Homer now directed readers to fine print.

In the 20th century, the asterisk found new work. Baseball used it to qualify records (Roger Maris's 61 home runs in 1961 carried an unofficial asterisk for years). Legal documents use it to signal exceptions. Online, *asterisks* became emphasis marks and action indicators. A 2,200-year-old librarian's doubt symbol is now the internet's way of whispering corrections.