Also know as Asterisk (disambiguation) and * (disambiguation). * An asterisk is a typographical symbol or glyph. * The * comes from Late Latin asteriscus, from Ancient Greek ἀστερίσκος, asteriskos, "little star". It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. * Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra). * In English, an asterisk is usually five-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces, and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. * It can be used as censorship. * It is also used on the Internet to correct one's spelling, in which case it appears after or before the corrected word. * In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a