One small star-shaped mark, central to asterisks in books, does an astonishing amount of work in written English, and readers who search for asterisks in books usually meet it in several different jobs at once. Sometimes it points to a footnote at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it marks a break between scenes. Sometimes it hides a letter in a swear word, corrects a spelling, or flags a word as invented, uncertain, or ungrammatical. Sometimes it simply means “look here” or “more to come”. This guide explains every major use of the asterisk in books, where each convention comes from, how to read it, and how writers and editors decide which use is appropriate. No single rule covers all cases, but once you recognise the patterns, you will never be puzzled by a stray star again.
Asterisks in Books: Footnotes and Marginal Notes
The oldest and most familiar job in asterisks in books of the asterisk is the footnote. In a printed book, a small asterisk after a word or sentence sends the reader to a note at the foot of the page, at the end of a chapter, or at the back of the book. The note may give a source, explain a term, offer a translation, add an author’s aside, or correct a detail without interrupting the main text. Traditional footnote sequences run asterisk, dagger, double dagger, and so on, because early printers had a limited set of symbols and needed a clear order when a page carried several notes.
Modern academic and non-fiction books more often use numbered footnotes or endnotes, because numbers are easier to follow when there are many notes. The asterisk survives in two niches: short notes in fiction, memoirs, and popular non-fiction, where a single asterisk feels lighter and less formal than a numbered system; and in books where the author wants a note to feel like a whispered aside rather than a scholarly apparatus. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are a famous example: footnotes marked with asterisks became a running joke and a second narrative voice, proving that a footnote can be literature in its own right rather than mere apparatus.
When you meet an asterisk footnote, read it as a deliberate interruption. The author or editor chose to place that information outside the main flow, either because it would slow the sentence down or because it belongs to a different register — a joke, a clarification, a confession. If a book uses asterisks for footnotes, the first note on a page usually resets the sequence, so an asterisk on page forty does not refer back to a note on page twelve.
Asterisks in Books: Scene Breaks and Section Dividers
The second most common use among asterisks in books in fiction is the scene break. A line of three asterisks, sometimes centred and sometimes separated by spaces (* * *), or a row of asterisks used as a decorative divider, signals a shift in time, place, or point of view without starting a new chapter. A character may leave one room and, after the asterisks, appear hours later in another city. A narrative may jump from one character’s perspective to another’s. The asterisks give the reader a breath and a visual cue: something has changed, but the chapter has not ended.
Different publishers style this differently. Some use three asterisks, some use a single centred asterisk, some use a fleuron (a decorative flower-like ornament) or a simple gap. The function is identical. What matters is consistency within a book: once a publisher establishes that three asterisks mean a scene break, readers learn to trust that signal and to pause accordingly. Writers submitting manuscripts are usually advised to mark scene breaks clearly — often with a centred hash or three asterisks in the manuscript — and to leave the final styling to the typesetter.
Scene-break asterisks also do emotional work. A break after a cliffhanger creates suspense. A break after a quiet moment creates reflection. A break in the middle of an argument can suggest that words have run out. Skilled writers use the white space around asterisks as part of the rhythm of a scene, not merely as punctuation. If you are reading a novel and you notice yourself slowing down at a row of asterisks, that slowing down is intentional.
Asterisks, Censorship, and Bowdlerisation
Asterisks in books also hide things. In older books and in modern editions that reproduce historical texts, a word may appear as “d***” or “f***” or with only its first letter visible. This is sometimes the author’s choice, sometimes an editor’s, and sometimes a publisher’s response to the standards of the time. The asterisk here functions as a fig leaf: the reader knows a strong word is intended, but the word itself is not printed in full. In historical novels and memoirs, asterisks may also mask names — “Mr. B***” — to protect a real person’s identity or to reproduce the discretion of an original letter or diary.
Modern readers often find this practice quaint or frustrating, but it has a history worth understanding. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century printers used asterisks and dashes to avoid printing profanity or to shield respectable readers, and the convention persisted into the twentieth century in children’s books and school editions. Today, the choice to asterisk a word is usually a stylistic or comedic one: a character who swears “in asterisks” is often funnier than a character who swears in full, because the reader supplies the missing word and becomes complicit in the joke.
There is also a related use in quoted material. When an editor quotes a source but omits part of it, the omission is normally marked with an ellipsis, not asterisks, but in older texts asterisks sometimes served the same purpose. If you meet a string of asterisks inside a quotation in an old book, treat it as a sign that something has been left out, and check the edition’s notes for an explanation.
Asterisks in Linguistics, Editing, and Special Marks
Beyond fiction, asterisks in books carry technical meanings that book readers meet in grammars, dictionaries, and scholarly editions. In linguistics, an asterisk before a word or sentence marks it as ungrammatical or unattested: “*He go to school” signals that the sentence is not acceptable English, while a reconstructed historical form may be marked with an asterisk to show that it is inferred rather than directly recorded. In dictionaries and word histories, an asterisk can mark a hypothetical form or a variant spelling.
In editing, an asterisk in a manuscript margin traditionally meant “insert here” or “see note”, and proofreaders still use asterisk-like marks in their own shorthand, although modern tracked changes have largely replaced them. In poetry, an asterisk may mark a variant reading, a dedication, or a note about the text’s history. In drama, an asterisk in a cast list or a programme note can indicate a role shared by two performers, a debut, or a special acknowledgement, with the explanation given nearby.
Mathematics and computing have their own asterisk traditions, which sometimes leak into books about those subjects. In mathematics, an asterisk can denote a special version of a symbol, a conjugate, or an optimal value. In computing, it often means “wildcard” — a stand-in for any characters — or multiplication. When a general book uses an asterisk in one of these technical senses, it should define it on first use, because the same mark means something different in a novel.
| Use | Where you meet it | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Footnote marker | Non-fiction, memoirs, comic novels | Look to the foot of the page for extra information |
| Scene break (* * *) | Fiction, short stories | Time, place, or viewpoint has changed |
| Censored letter | Older editions, quoted letters | A word or name is deliberately hidden |
| Linguistic marker | Grammars, dictionaries | The form is ungrammatical or reconstructed |
| Emphasis in plain text | Manuscripts, messages, early e-books | Words between asterisks are stressed |
| Wildcard or multiplication | Maths and computing books | Defined by context; check the book’s notation list |
Asterisks for Emphasis and Tone in Plain Text
Before rich text formatting was universal, asterisks in books and in messages alike, writers used asterisks to show emphasis in plain text: *this* meant this, and **this** in some systems meant this. That convention survives in messages, in markdown documents, and in books that reproduce emails, chats, or early internet writing. When a novel includes a character’s text messages, asterisks around a word often reproduce exactly how that character typed it, and the effect is deliberate: the reader hears stress, irony, or urgency that plain words alone would not convey.
Editors sometimes preserve this usage in printed books about digital culture, because removing the asterisks would remove evidence of how people actually wrote. A memoir of early online life that “cleaned up” its asterisks would be less accurate, not more polished. If you meet *emphasis asterisks* in a printed book, read them as stage directions for the voice in your head: stress that word, pause there, or hear the irony.
Asterisks also mark corrections in informal writing. A message that says “teh” followed by “*the” is a self-correction, a convention borrowed from chat and now common in novels that reproduce dialogue realistically. Similarly, a single asterisk at the start of a line can mark an action or a stage direction in role-playing and fan writing. These uses are not standard in formal publishing, but they are part of how the asterisk lives in everyday written English, and books that document that life naturally include them.
Asterisks in Books: A Short History of the Mark
The asterisk’s name comes from the Greek word for “little star”, and its history in print goes back to early modern books, where printers used it to mark omissions, additions, and passages that needed attention. The great early dictionaries and biblical editions used asterisks to flag variant readings and doubtful passages, a practice that gave the mark its scholarly authority. By the eighteenth century, the asterisk was a standard printer’s tool, alongside the dagger and the double dagger, for footnotes and cross-references.
As printing became cheaper and books became more varied, the asterisk spread into fiction, journalism, and popular writing, picking up new jobs along the way. The scene-break use grew with the modern novel’s interest in shifting perspectives. The censorship use grew with changing standards of propriety. The emphasis use grew with typewriters and then computers, which could not easily produce italics. Each new medium found a new use for the little star, and none of the old uses quite died out.
That layered history is why asterisks in books can feel confusing: you are meeting several centuries of conventions in a single symbol. The trick is to read context first. A single asterisk after a word in a history book almost certainly means a footnote. Three asterisks on their own line in a novel almost certainly mean a scene break. Asterisks inside a word almost certainly mean a hidden letter. Context, not the mark alone, tells you which asterisk you are looking at.
For writers, the practical lesson is consistency and clarity. If you use asterisks for footnotes, do not also use them for scene breaks in the same book unless the styles are visually distinct. If you use them for censorship, decide your policy early and apply it evenly. If you reproduce digital writing, preserve its asterisks and explain the convention to readers who may not know it. Good typography is invisible when it works; the asterisk works best when the reader never has to stop and wonder what it means.
Readers who enjoy writing craft may also like our writing guide for published authors, our explainer on citation in text, and our piece on the chapbook award tradition in small-press publishing.
Asterisks in Books: How to Read Them Without Pausing
With practice, reading asterisks in books becomes automatic. A single asterisk after a word sends you to the foot of the page; three asterisks on a line tell you to pause for a scene change; asterisks inside a word tell you something is hidden; and an asterisk before a linguistic form tells you it is reconstructed or ungrammatical. The skill is simply to notice which pattern you are in and to trust it. Most confusion about asterisks in books comes from mixing patterns — expecting a footnote where a scene break is meant, for example — so if a mark puzzles you, reread the surrounding lines and ask which job fits the context. Publishers help by keeping their conventions consistent, and readers help themselves by learning the handful of patterns in this guide. Once those patterns are familiar, asterisks in books stop interrupting your reading and start enriching it, quietly signalling footnotes, breaks, jokes, and corrections exactly where they are needed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a single asterisk mean in a book?
Usually it marks a footnote: look at the foot of the page or the end of the chapter for the note it points to. In a linguistic text, an asterisk before a form can instead mean the form is ungrammatical or reconstructed.
What do three asterisks on their own line mean?
In fiction they usually mark a scene break — a change of time, place, or point of view within a chapter. Some publishers use a decorative ornament or a gap for the same purpose.
Why are some letters replaced by asterisks?
To hide a strong word or a name deliberately, either for propriety, for privacy, or for comic effect. The reader is expected to infer the missing letters from context.
What do asterisks around a word mean in messages?
Emphasis, equivalent to italics in print. *Really* in plain text is read as really spoken with stress.
Conclusion
The asterisk is small, but it is one of the hardest-working marks in the book. It annotates, divides, hides, corrects, emphasises, and flags uncertainty, and it has done so for centuries across fiction, scholarship, poetry, and digital writing. Understanding asterisks in books is therefore not a piece of trivia; it is a reading skill. Once you can tell a footnote asterisk from a scene-break asterisk, a censored asterisk from a linguistic one, you read more smoothly and you notice more of what writers and editors are doing. The next time a little star appears on the page, pause for a second, check its context, and enjoy the fact that such a tiny mark can carry so much meaning.
