Shady Characters

The asterisk is old. Really old. Granted, it is not 5,000 years old, as Robert Bringhurst claims in the otherwise impeccable Elements of Typographic Style1 (Bringhurst confuses it with a star-like cuneiform mark that represents “deity” or “heaven”2), but it has more than two millennia under its belt nonetheless. I go into greater detail in the Shady Characters book, but the abridged version of the asterisk’s origin story goes something like this.

In the third century BCE, at Alexandria in Egypt, a librarian named Zenodotus was was struggling to edit the works of Homer into something approaching their original form. I say a librarian, but really Zenodotus was the librarian, the first in a long line to be employed at Alexandria by the Ptolemaic pharaohs.3 Many spurious additions, deletions and alterations had been made to the Odyssey and Iliad since the time of their composition, but Zenodotus lacked the tools to deal with them. As such, he started drawing a short dash (—) in the margin beside each line he considered to be superfluous, and, in doing so, inaugurated the field of literary criticism.4 Named the obelos, or “roasting spit”, in the seventh century Isidore of Seville captured the essence of Zenodotus’s mark when he wrote that “like an arrow, it slays the superfluous and pierces the false”.5

The asterisk, in turn, was created by one of Zenodotus’s successors. In the second century BCE, Aristarchus of Samothrace introduced an array of new critical symbols: the diple (>) called out noteworthy features in the text; the diple periestigmene (⸖) marked lines where Aristarchus disagreed with Zenodotus’s edits; and, finally, the asteriskos (※), or “little star”, denoted duplicate lines.6,7 Occasionally, Aristarchus paired an asterisk and obelus to indicate lines that belonged elsewhere in the poem.8

Thus the asterisk was born. And right from the beginning, it came with a warning: a text with an asterisk attached to it is not the whole story.

Having survived the intervening millennia with its visual form largely intact, by the medieval period the asterisk had moved into a new role as an “anchor” for readers’ notes: where a reader wanted to link a note scribbled in the margin to a particular passage in the text, a pair of asterisks would do the trick. Later, in printed books, authors used the asterisk to call out their own asides.9

By the twentieth century, the asterisk had become the de facto leader of the footnote clan. In 1953, a lexicographer named Eric Partridge explained that “the following are often used”: ‘*’, ‘†’, ‘**’, ‘‡’ or ‘††’, ‘***’ or ‘⁂’ or ‘⁂’, and finally ‘†††’.10 Things have calmed down a little since Partridge’s time, but ‘*’, ‘†’, and ‘‡’ are still relatively common and even ‘§’, ‘||’ and ‘¶’ appear on occasion. Should a writer’s penchant for footnotes extend past five or six per page, lettered or numbered notes may be a better option and, indeed, the frequency of typographic footnote markers does seem to have waned over the past few decades.

Yet even as the asterisk is used less often as a footnote marker, its implied meaning — that there is more here than meets the eye — is as strong as ever. For American newspapers, merely to use the word “asterisk” is to tarnish its subject by association; for American sports writers, doubly so.

It all goes back to 1961, and a baseball establishment unwilling to see one of its all-time greats toppled from his pedestal. That year, Roger Maris of the New York Yankees had beaten George Herman “Babe” Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a single season — but Maris’s record-breaking season had been eight games longer than Ruth’s record-setting 1927 season. Baseball commissioner Ford Frick announced that:

Any player who has hit more than 60 home runs during his club’s first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than 60 until after this club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark on the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154-game schedule.

Reporter Dick Young of the New York Daily News is said to have suggested that “Maybe you should use an asterisk on the new record. Everybody does that when there’s a difference of opinion.” An asterisk: a little star to diminish Maris’s brilliance on the diamond. Young’s asterisk was never actually employed, but for many years baseball almanacs carried both Maris’s and Ruth’s records side by side.11

Since Maris’s time, the asterisk has become the go-to metaphor for sports writers seeking to hedge some apparently remarkable achievement or another. In the early 2000s, Barry Bonds, one of baseball’s all-time greats, was awarded a plethora of asterisks in the wake of a doping scandal (“Tarnished Records Deserve an Asterisk”;12 “An Asterisk Is Very Real, Even When It’s Not”13). Lance Armstrong, another era-defining athlete, was pelted with asterisks after his own doping revelations (“Armstrong, best of his time, now with an asterisk”;14 “Armstrong: an era of asterisks*”15). The sporting asterisk travels, too: Mo Farah, one of Britain’s most celebrated athletes, has faced questions about his relationship with a disgraced sports doctor (“Sir Mo Farah’s link to a notorious doper leaves an asterisk next to his name”16).

Less often, the asterisk makes itself felt in the news proper. The Boston Globe reported George W. Bush’s contentious victory in the 2000 US presidential election with the headline “Bush Wins Election*”, accompanying it with a subtitle that read “*Pending Gore Challenges, Possible Supreme Court Ruling”.17 More recently, the controversial appointments of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court have both attracted asterisks (“Hirono: Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS seat has ‘big asterisk’”;18 “Welcome, Justice Barrett. Now here’s your asterisk”19). And, needless to say, the president who made those two appointments found himself labelled with an asterisk of his own on the occasion of his impeachment in 2019 (“Now Trump’s legacy bears an asterisk of shame”20). Who’s to say he won’t attract a few more before the 20th of January next year?

But that was then, and this is now. In the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic that continues to rage across the globe, the asterisk has been promoted to the top shelf of the sub-editor’s toolbox and, as a result, headlines on both the back pages and the front are suffering from a rash of little stars. It seemed remiss to let this go without remark, so I present to you a lightly annotated and extremely partial survey of 2020’s asterisk-bearing headlines. Enjoy, and please add your own examples in the comments!

Sports news in the USA

• Let’s Call Them The Houston Asterisks* (Forbes, 17th February) – a rare outlier published before the coronavirus pandemic started throwing up asterisks here, there and everywhere. The article refers to “sign stealing”, a way to cheat in baseball, and the headline riffs on the Houston Astros’ official team name.
• 2020 NBA champion will join long list of titles with asterisks (NBC Sports, 26th June)
• Cautious Serena Williams OK with US Open bubble in ‘asterisk’ year (New York Post, 21st August)
• Serena Williams on US Open being devalued due to withdrawals: ‘This whole year deserves an asterisk’ (Tennis365, 23rd August)
• The 2020 Sports Season Counts. No Asterisks, No Questions. (Wall Street Journal, 8th October)
• Should the 2020 MLS season have an asterisk on it? (Fansided, 31st October) — notable only because the question in the article’s title is answered immediately, presumably by the same sub-editor who wrote the headline in the first place, with a standfirst that reads: “There should be an asterisk next to the 2020 MLS season”. No sense in keeping one’s readers in suspense, I suppose.
• 2020 World Series needs no asterisk, says 1988 Dodger exec Fred Claire (Daily Bulletin, 1st November)

Other news in the USA

• Extending the Asterisk (Inside Higher Ed, 11th August) — a college dean discusses “pass/no credit” options available to students affected by the pandemic.
• Areas With COVID Clusters to Get Asterisk on Health Reports (Government Technology, 22nd October) — an unusually literal use of the asterisk on public health reports to indicate towns and cities in Massachusetts with high incidences of coronavirus.
• US Economy Grows at Record Pace, With an Asterisk (Newser, 29th October)

Sports news outside the USA

• Ally McCoist in Celtic title asterisk claim as Rangers legend highlights ‘the biggest issue’ (Daily Record, 30th April)
• Forget the asterisk – Celtic’s ninth straight Scottish title triumph isn’t tainted (The Herald, 16th May) — the asterisk taketh away, but can also be taken away. An indirect rebuttal to the preceding article.
• Is There an Asterisk Next to Liverpool’s Title Win? 90min Asked Jamie Carragher & Gary Neville (90Min, 16th June)
• An asterisk on Liverpool’s title? I had to Google the word, says Jurgen Klopp (I News, 19th June) — another asterisk refusenik. Laconic Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp hits back against aspersions cast on his team’s league win (such as those in the preceding article).
• Liz McColgan hints asterisk should accompany records set in Nike’s controversial Alphafly shoes (The Scotsman, 20th October) — another non-corona asterisk, this time summoned by a sceptical McColgan in response to Nike’s carbon-soled running shoes being used to help break the two-hour marathon record.
• Asterisk an obelisk in a year where premierships mean so much more (Sydney Morning Herald, 23rd October) — a clever headline, this one, invoking both the asterisk and its predecessor the obelos, albeit in its later sense as a monumental stone. Don’t treat the asterisk as a bad thing, contends Malcolm Knox, author of the piece; instead, acknowledge that even a curtailed sports season has an important part to play in helping fans get through the current difficult times. In this sense, an asterisk can be a badge of honour.
• The Verdict: There won’t be an asterisk next to this team (The Rugby Paper, 27th October)
• No asterisk needed, Richmond Tigers among AFL’s very best (The Young Witness, 28th October)
• Derry captain Chrissy McKaigue believes there will be an asterisk over winners of this year’s Championship (The Irish Sun, 30th October)

Other news outside the USA

• Introducing Generation Asterisk – the cohort of students forever marked by Covid (The Telegraph, 13th August)

Pre-2020 bonus asterisks

• For Branca, an Asterisk of a Different Kind (New York Times, 15th August, 2011)
• The Ultimate ‘Asterisk Years’ in NBA History (Bleacher Report, 15th May, 2013)
• Chuck Close Is Accused of Harassment. Should His Artwork Carry an Asterisk? (New York Times, 28th January, 2018)
• Artist Emma Sulkowicz Wore Asterisks—and Little Else—to Protest Chuck Close at the Met (and Picasso at MoMA) (artnet news, 2nd February, 2018) — this and the preceding article relate to sexual harassment allegations levelled at a prominent American portraitist. A worthy use of the asterisk if ever I’ve seen one.
• Eliud Kipchoge’s historic sub-two-hour marathon will carry an asterisk (The Economist, 13th October, 2019)

As the little stars continue to roll in, please do take care of yourself. Remember: in 2020, you only have one asterisk.

1.

Bringhurst, Robert. “Asterisk”. In The Elements of Typographic Style : Version 3.2, 303+. Hartley and Marks, Publishers, 2008.

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2.

Kramer, Samuel Noah. “The Origin and Development of the Cuneiform System of Writing”. In The Sumerians : Their History, Culture, and Character, 302-304. University of Chicago Press, 1963.

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3.

Smith, William. “Zenodotus”. In Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology., 951+. C.C. Little and J. Brown; [etc., etc.], 1849.

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4.

Pfeiffer, Rudolf. “Zenodotus and His Contemporaries”. In History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age, 105-122. Clarendon, 1968.

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5.

, and Stephen A. Barney. “Punctuated Clauses (De Posituris)”. In The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

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6.

Pfeiffer, Rudolf. “Aristarchus: The Art of Interpretation”. In History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age, 210-233. Clarendon, 1968.

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7.

OED Online. “Asterisk”.

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8.

McNamee, Kathleen. “Sigla”. In Sigla and Select Marginalia in Greek Literary Papyri, 9+. Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1992.

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9.

Parkes, M. B. “The Technology of Printing and the Stabilization of the Symbols”. In Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West, 50-64. University of California Press, 1993.

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10.

Partridge, E. “Oddments”. In You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies, 226+. Hamilton, 1953.

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11.

Barra, Allen. “Roger Maris’s Misunderstood Quest to Break the Home Run Record”. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July 27, 2011.

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12.

Wilbon, Michael. “Tarnished Records Deserve an Asterisk”. Washington Post.

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13.

Barra, Allen. “An Asterisk Is Very Real, Even When It’s Not”. New York Times.

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14.

Vecsey, George. “Armstrong, Best of His Time, Now With an Asterisk”. New York Times.

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15.

Arnold, Rob. “Armstrong: An Era of Asterisks*”. Ride Media.

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16.

Samuel, Martin. “Mo Farah’s Link to a Notorious Doper Leaves an Asterisk Next to His Name”. Daily Mail Online.

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17.

Kranish, Michael, and Susan Milligan. “Bush Wins Election*”. Boston Globe.

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18.

Guida, Victoria. “Hirono: Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS Seat Has ’big asterisk’”. Politico.

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19.

Seeley, George. “Welcome, Justice Barrett. Now here’s Your Asterisk”. Boston Globe. October 29, 2020.

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20.

Robinson, Eugene. “Now Trump’s Legacy Bears an Asterisk of Shame”. Washington Post. December 19, 2019.

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