Arabic star

Punctuation mark used for Arabic

U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR

The Arabic star is a punctuation mark added to Unicode 1.1^[1] because the asterisk (*) might appear similar to a Star of David in its six-lobed form (^✻).^[2]^[3]

The Arabic star is given a distinct character in Unicode, U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR (the note ‘appearance rather variable’ was added in Unicode 5.1^[4]), in the range Arabic punctuation.^[5]

Variants

In many modern fonts, however, the asterisk is five-pointed, and the Arabic star is sometimes six- or eight-pointed. The two symbols are compared below (the display depends on your browser's font).

Asterisk	Full-width Asterisk	Arabic star	five-pointed star	six-pointed star	eight-pointed star
*	＊	٭	★	✶	✴

Unicode

In Unicode, Arabic and similar stars are encoded at:

U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR
U+06DE ۞ ARABIC START OF RUB EL HIZB

In some displays, the use of the ٭ character can cause the text directionality to change.^[6]

References

^ Unicode 1.1 appendix H § 5.4.3: ‘٭’ [066D] arabic five pointed star’
^ Fonts & Encodings by Yannis Haralambous, page 73: ‘There is nothing inherently Arabic about the character ‘٭’ 0x066D arabic five pointed star; it was provided only to ensure that a five-pointed asterisk would be available, as the ordinary asterisk ‘*’, with its six lobes, might be mistaken for a Star of David in print of poor quality.’
^ Kenneth Whistler, who was secretary of the Unicode Technical Committee around the time this character was added later wrote: ‘U+066D is a politically motivated addition for Arabic, which always retains its 5-pointed form, so as not to be reminiscent in any way of the Star of David.’
^ Unicode 5.1 chart Arabic
^ Chart U+0600 Arabic
^ Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm