What ✯ means
It adds decoration, emphasis, or a visual break.
✯ belongs to the printer's-ornament tradition: dingbats are small decorative marks used in print for borders and section breaks. In a message, its placement can make this star symbol a heading mark or divider.
A typographic ornament; the surrounding text supplies its tone.
A blank box usually means the active font lacks ✯; the character may still be present.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ✯ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ✯
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 272F, then Alt+X to get ✯.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “pinwheel star”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 272f, then Enter or Space.
HTML
✯CSS
\272FCodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
✯
HTML hex
✯
CSS content
content: "\272F";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%9C%AF
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.