Dagger

It marks a note or, in biographical contexts, a death. Printers also call it the obelisk. If † follows a name in a paper or list, look for the matching footnote before assuming the person has died. In a genealogy or biography, it can identify a deceased person or mark their death year.

A dagger is not a declaration of faith

Use explicit wording when announcing a death. The dagger's cross-like shape can suggest a religious affiliation you did not intend. In English prose, “the late” or “died” communicates the death without asking your reader to interpret †.

What did the dagger originally mean?

Its ancestor flagged text an editor considered doubtful. The dagger comes from the tradition of the obelus, a mark scholars in ancient Alexandria put beside suspicious or spurious lines in texts of Homer. Marks in this family are attested by the 2nd century BCE; that dates the ancestral tradition, not the exact modern † shape.

Ancient editors used the obelus alongside the asterisk: the asterisk could flag an added or repeated passage, the obelus a problem. Later printers kept both as reference marks, with † coming after *. The sign evolved through editorial practice; its resemblance to a Christian cross is not evidence of a shared origin.