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Information about Dagger (typography)

“†” redirects here. For the album by Justice, see † (album).
“Double Dagger” redirects here. For the punk rock band, see Double Dagger (band).


A dagger (†, †, U+2020) is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is also called an obelus or obelos, from a Greek word meaning "roasting spit" or "needle", or obelisk, its diminutive (see obelisk). A double dagger (‡, ‡, U+2021) is a variant with two "handles", and is also called a diesis or Cross of Lorraine.

†
 •  • [ e]
Punctuation
apostrophe ( ’ ' )
brackets ( ), [ ], { }, < >
colon ( : )
comma ( , )
dashes ( ‒, –, —, ― )
ellipsis ( …, ... )
exclamation mark ( ! )
full stop/period ( . )
guillemets ( ' ' )
hyphen ( -, ‐ )
question mark ( ? )
quotation marks ( ‘ ’, “ ” )
semicolon ( ; )
slash/stroke ( / )
solidus ( ∕ )
Interword separation
spaces ( ) ( ) ( )
interpunct ( )
General typography
ampersand ( & )
asterisk ( * )
at ( @ )
backslash ( \ )
bullet ( • )
caret ( ^ )
currency ( ) , $, €, , , ₩, ₪
dagger/obelisk ( † ) ( ‡ )
degree ( )
dele ( )
emoticons (☻ )
inverted exclamation point ( )
inverted question mark ( )
number sign ( # )
numero sign ( № )
percent and related signs
( %, ‰, ‱ )
pilcrow ( )
prime ( ′ )
section sign ( )
tilde/swung dash ( ~ )
umlaut/diaeresis ( )
underscore/understrike ( _ )
vertical/pipe/broken bar ( |, )
Uncommon typography
asterism ( ⁂ )
index/fist ( ☞ )
therefore sign ( ∴ )
lozenge ( ◊ )
heart ( ♥ )
interrobang ( ‽ )
irony mark ( ؟ )
reference mark ( ※ )
sarcasm mark

History

The symbol was first used in liturgical books of the Roman Catholic Church, marking a minor intermediate pause in the chanting of Psalm verses (the major intermediate pause was marked with an asterisk) or the point at which the chanting of the Psalm was taken up after an introductory antiphon whose words were identical with the opening words of the Psalm.

Usage

The dagger is used to indicate a footnote, in the same way an asterisk is. However, the dagger is only used as a second footnote when an asterisk is already used. Third footnote employs the double daggers. Additional footnotes are somewhat inconsistent and represented by a variety of symbols, e.g., parallels (||) and the pilcrow (¶), some of which are nonexistent in early modern typography. Partly due to this, in modern literature, superscript numerals are used in the place of pictorial symbols. Some texts use asterisks and daggers alongside superscripts, using the former for per-page footnotes and the latter for endnotes.

The dagger should not be confused with the "box drawings light vertical and horizontal" (┼, U+253C). The double dagger should not be confused with palatal click (IPA: [ǂ], U+01C2).

Sometimes it is replaced in ASCII by a plus sign (+).

Since it also represents the Christian cross, in certain predominantly Christian regions, the mark is used in a text before or after the name of a deceased person or the date of death, as in Christian grave headstones. For this reason, it should not be used as a footnote mark next to the name of a living person. Generally, the symbol should only be used in this fashion for people who were Christians.[1]

In European railway timetables, the dagger (Christian cross) is frequently used as a conventional sign meaning "Sundays and holidays".

On the London Underground, the dagger symbol is used as "points to remember".

In taxonomic nomenclature, the dagger symbol is used to denote extinct taxa.

In Mathematics and, more often, Physics, a dagger is used to denote the Hermitian adjoint of an operator; for example, A† denotes the adjoint of A. This notation is sometimes replaced with an asterisk, especially in Mathematics. An operator is said to be Hermitian if A† = A.

In textual criticism, and hence some editions of dated texts, daggers are used to enclose disputed text.

In chess notation, the dagger may be suffixed to a move to signify the move resulted in a check, and a double dagger is used to denote checkmate. This is a stylistic variation on the more common '+' (plus sign) for a check and '++' (double plus) or '#' (number sign) for checkmate.

In chemistry, the double dagger is used to indicate a transition state molecule.

On a cricket scorecard or team list, the dagger indicates the team's wicket-keeper[1]

Enlarge picture
Dagger and double-dagger symbols in a variety of fonts, showing the differences between stylized and non-stylized characters

References

1. ^ (2002) Oxford Manual of Style. Oxford University Press. 
Double Dagger are a post-hardcore trio from Baltimore, Maryland composed of only drums, vocals, and a very loud bass guitar which fills the space a guitar would normally take.
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Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in any of the world's writing systems. Developed in tandem with the Universal Character Set standard and published in book form as The Unicode Standard
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glyph is the shape given in a particular typeface to a specific grapheme or symbol.

The term for the abstract entity represented by a glyph is character: a typographical character may be a grapheme (an element of a writing system), but also a numeral, a punctuation
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Obelism is the practice of annotating manuscripts with marks set in the margins. Modern obelisms are used by editors blue-penciling a manuscript or typescript. Examples are "stet" (which is Latin for "Let it stand," used in this context to mean "disregard the previous mark") and
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Greek}}} 
Writing system: Greek alphabet 
Official status
Official language of:  Greece
 Cyprus
 European Union
recognised as minority language in parts of:
 European Union
 Italy
 Turkey
Regulated by:
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A diminutive is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment. It is the opposite of an augmentative.
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obelisk (Greek ὀβελίσκος [obeliskos], diminutive of ὀβελός [obelos], "needle") is a tall, narrow, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramidal top.
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The Cross of Lorraine, ‡, is a heraldic cross. The "double cross" consists of a vertical line crossed by two smaller horizontal bars. The lower bar is as close to the bottom of the vertical as the upper bar is to the top.
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Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers, including punctuation marks (listed at right), inter-word spaces, capitalization, and indentation.
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apostrophe ( ’  or  ' ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages written in the Latin alphabet.
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Brackets are punctuation marks used in pairs to set apart or interject text within other text. With respect to computer science, the term is sometimes said to only strictly apply to the square or box type.
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colon (“:”) is a punctuation mark, consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line.

Punctuation

Usage

As with many other punctuation marks, the usage of colon varies among languages and, for a given language, among
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For other uses, see Comma.
A comma ( , ) is a punctuation mark. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text.
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A dash is a punctuation mark. It is longer than a hyphen and is used differently.

Common dashes

There are several forms of dash, of which the most common are:
  glyph Unicode[1] HTML[2] HTML/XML[3]
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Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from Greek ἔλλειψις 'omission') in printing and writing refers to the row of three full stops (… or . . .
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exclamation mark or exclamation point is a punctuation mark: ! It is usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume, and generally marks the end of a sentence.
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Full Stop is an album released in 2000 by Annabelle Chvostek.

Track listing

  1. "Icy blue"
  2. "Messages get through"
  3. "Body Work"
  4. "Gray's Pussycat Edie"
  5. "Chills"
  6. "Blows me away"
  7. "La La La"
  8. "Booby Boo"
  9. "That in itself"

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Guillemets, also called angle quotes, are line segments, pointed as if arrows (« or »), sometimes forming a complementary set of punctuation marks used as a form of quotation mark.
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hyphen ( ‐ ) is a punctuation mark. It is used both to join words and to separate syllables. It is often confused with the dashes ( –, —, ― ), which are longer and have different functions.
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question mark (?), also known as an interrogation point, question point, query,[1] or eroteme, is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence.
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Quotation marks or inverted commas (also informally quotes,[1] and occasionally speech marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase or a word.
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A semicolon (  ;  ) is a punctuation mark. The Italian printer Aldus Manutius the Elder established the practice of using the mark to separate words opposed in meaning and to mark off interdependent statements.
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Due to technical limitations, /. redirects here. You may be looking for Slashdot, the technology news web site.
A slash or stroke, /, is a punctuation mark.
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The solidus character U+2044, ⁄, also known as a shilling mark, is a punctuation mark; it is not found on standard keyboards.

The solidus is similar to the slash, a character found on standard keyboards.
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This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
Please help recruit one or [ improve this article] yourself. See the talk page for details.
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In writing, a space ( ) is any empty (non-written) zone between written sections. However, the term is usually used to refer to an empty zone used for interword separation (interword space) or separation between punctuation and words.
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An interpunct · is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language. The dot is vertically centered, e.g.
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Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques.
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For the magazine, see Ampersand magazine.
An ampersand (&), also commonly called an "and sign" is a logogram representing the conjunction "and." The symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and.
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asterisk (*), is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (Latin astrum). Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm
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