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This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007) |
The symbol ☞ is a punctuation mark, called an index or fist. Though rare today, this symbol was in common use between the 12th and 18th centuries in the margins of books, and was formerly included in lists of standard punctuation marks. Its typical use is as a bullet-like symbol to direct the reader’s attention to important text, having roughly the same meaning as the word “attention” or “note”. Some encyclopedias use it in articles to cross-reference, as in ☞other articles. It occasionally sees use in magazines and comic books to indicate to the reader that a story on the right-hand page continues onto the next.
It primarily fell out of favor because its complex design made it unfit for handwriting, and its wide size made it difficult to fit on a typewriter or on early, low-resolution, monospaced computer fonts. Thus, it was not included in early forms of ASCII. It was, however, added to Unicode.
Other names for the symbol include bishop's fist, digit, manicule, mutton-fist and pointing hand (see Sherman, p. 10).
The mark is sometimes used in web designs to indicate an active or selected hyper link. In linguistics, the symbol is also often used in Optimality Theoretic tableaux to identify the winner in a candidate set. Many video games made in the 80s and 90s, primarily text-based adventure games, use an index as a cursor. It is also used in some web browsers such as dillo to indicate a hyperlink.
Unicode
There are six index symbols in Unicode.
- Black left pointing index: U+261A ☚
- Black right pointing index: U+261B ☛
- White left pointing index: U+261C ☜
- White up pointing index: U+261D ☝
- White right pointing index: U+261E ☞
- White down pointing index: U+261F ☟
In addition, the dingbat font Wingdings 2, found in all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, includes 16 forms of the index, and the original Wingdings font features four others (resembling the white Unicode indices).
External links
- Sherman, William. Toward a History of the Manicule, 2005.
- Collection of photographs of manicules on Flickr
