What * means
Its position tells you what job it is doing.
The footnote symbol points to an explanatory note. Inside profanity, it masks letters without necessarily hiding the word. In some search patterns and commands, the wildcard * stands for a run of characters; the exact rules depend on the system.
Why did someone send *word?
They are probably correcting something they just wrote.
After tomorow, tomorrow means “I meant tomorrow.” Both *word and word are used for corrections. Keep the star beside the replacement; if the correction could be ambiguous, write out what you meant.
Casual for chat corrections; in formal documents, follow the publication’s footnote style.
If a correction changes something important, spell it out rather than relying on the star.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsCombination ideas
3Questions people ask
2Why does *word* turn italic?
It is Markdown: a system that turns punctuation into formatting. In Markdown text, put a backslash before each star, as in \*word\*, to keep the stars visible.
Can a screen reader say star?
Yes. Guidance from 2026 notes that screen readers may announce * as “star,” making its role as a footnote marker less obvious. Do not rely on the symbol alone to explain where a note belongs.
How to type *
*\002ACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.