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The Asterisk (Trust Me About Grammar, Not About Baseball)
Episode 70: August 10, 2007

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Grammar Girl here.

Today's topic is the asterisk.

Why? Because Barry Bonds just broke the record for number of home runs in one season* and people are talking about putting an asterisk next to his name in the record book because of the steroid controversy surrounding his career (1, 2). It's a punctuation-related news story, and those come about so rarely I just couldn't pass it up.

The aste-risk is that little star above the “8” key on your keyboard, and the word asterisk actually comes from the Latin and Greek words for “little star” (3). Asterisk can also be used as a verb to mean that you've marked something with the little star; for example, some sports writers want the baseball commissioner to asterisk Barry Bonds's record.

I had a little bit of hesitation about doing this episode because the pronunciation is so tricky. It's pronounced aste-risk. Aste-risk. It's common to hear people call it aste-rick or aste-rix, but the correct pronunciation is aste-risk (4).

My first rule for using an asterisk is to always make sure it refers to something at the bottom of the page. It makes me crazy when ads have an asterisk next to some offer, and then you can't find what it means. More than once I've seen something such as Jack hammers, 20% off*, and then nothing else on the page to indicate what the asterisk means. Does it mean I get 20% off only if it is a Sunday and my name is Squiggly? I hate that!

That's how an asterisk is used these days—you place it after something you want to comment on or qualify. Historically, asterisks were also used to show that something was omitted or that there was a passage of time, but that use has been largely taken over by the ellipsis (5). Today, the asterisk is for commenting, especially when you need to avoid letters or numbers.

For example, the Chicago Manual of Style wisely notes that when you add comments to mathematical or chemical equations, you should use symbols to keep people from confusing your comment marks as part of the equations. You wouldn't want readers thinking your second comment note means to square the equation!

They also note that if you have to include both citations and substantive comments in a document, you should use symbols for footnoted comments. You use the symbols in a specific order that starts with the asterisk and then continues with the dagger, double dagger, section mark, parallels, and number sign. If you need more symbols, you start over in the sequence and double each symbol; for example, double asterisk, double dagger, double double dagger, etcetera (6).

I couldn't find anything to back this up, but I have a theory that when used alone an asterisk has a more negative connotation than a number or a letter. Think about advertisements: the asterisk always indicates some limitation of what seems like a great offer. Also, when linguists want to show examples of incorrect words or sentences, they mark them with an asterisk. And finally, thinking back to Barry Bonds, I'm sure the proposed asterisk next to his name in the record book isn't something he's looking forward to seeing.

That's all.

Please remember to vote for Grammar Girl and Money Girl at PodcastAwards.com if you're so inclined. This week Money Girl is talking about FDIC insurance and what happens if your bank goes out of business.

If you visit QuickAndDirtyTips.com you can find my contact information, read the entire transcript of this podcast, and sign up for the e-mail newsletter so you can get more free grammar tips.

Thanks for listening.

* As noted in the comments, Barry Bonds just broke the record for career home runs, not the record for most runs in one season.

References

Nason, N. “Bonds Makes an Asterisk of Himself,” The Australian. August 09, 2007, http://urltea.com/1ee3 (accessed August 9, 2007)
Wilbon, M. “Tarnished Records Deserve an Asterisk,” The Washington Post. Saturday, December 4, 2004; p. D10, http://urltea.com/1ee5 (accessed August 9, 2007).
Strumpf, M. and Douglas, A. The Grammar Bible. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004, p. 450.
Garner, B. A. Garner's Modern English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003, p. 70.
Shaw, H. Punctuate It Right. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1993, p. 46.
The Chicago Manual of Style. Fourteenth Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 420, p. 505.

Comments (14) for The Asterisk (Trust Me About Grammar, Not About Baseball) | Subscribe to Comment

Grammar Girl Says:
9/20/2007 11:28:14 PM

I just looked up this extra bit of information: According to the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, the asterisk goes after all punctuation marks except a dash.

CheekierMeSly Says:
8/16/2007 1:16:17 PM

I'm with Andrew - I regularly use the asterisk to "sanitize" potty-mouthed language. I'm not above the occasional expletive use on my blag">http://www.xkcd.com/148/">blag, but some young urchins read it and I don't wish to upset their parents. Much. Someone I read regularly (Scott Adams? Erin O'Brien? I'm stumped at the moment to recall, and Google is failing me) recently said that the asterisk was the dirtiest character in the English language. Love your stuff, Grammar Girl! And props for the spell check for these here comments. -----

Dennis Says:
8/16/2007 8:54:31 AM

Congrats on winning the Education award from the Podcast People's Choice Awards! w00t! -----

Scott T Says:
8/14/2007 8:43:27 PM

I remember that Sniglet, too; in fact, it's the *only* Sniglet I remember, and I still use it to this day. I remember it slightly differently from you--rather than a word describing the feeling of discovering such an exasperating asterisk, I remember it as a word for the rogue asterisk itself: exasperisk. While I think they're both good words, just for kicks I tried to verify which was the actual Sniglet using Google. In all of Webdom, Google finds only two references to "exasperisk". On the other hand, the single lonely Google hit on "asterexasperation" is your comment above! Interestingly, neither word appears in an online collection of Sniglets I found (http://bertc.com/sniglets.htm). Anyway, like "greengrocer's apostrophe", having a brilliant word for it makes the fool's errand of hunting for the other end of what eventually turns out to be an exasperisk a tiny bit more tolerable. -----

Chuck Tomasi Says:
8/12/2007 1:08:11 AM

In your latest show you mentioned the use of an asterisk, but no referencing comment at the bottom of the page. Rich Hall used to have a book called "Sniglets" back in the 80s. One of my favorites was a word to describe the feeling you get when you find an asterisk with no referencing footnote. The word he came up with was called "Asterexasperation". -----

Grammar Girl Says:
8/11/2007 4:44:10 PM

It can be written either way: Bonds' or Bonds's. Many people are surprised to find out that it's a style issue. I covered the topic in one of the apostrophe episodes. I think it looks cleaner without the final s, but a style a lot of people use is that if you pronounce the second s, you should include it. So since I pronounced the second s, I included it. Legal Lad talked about the laws governing home run ball ownership this week, and he pronounced Bonds' without the final s, so I left out the final s in his transcript. -----

Michael Webb Says:
8/11/2007 1:48:16 AM

Being as much of a baseball pedant as I am a grammar pedant, I raced to my computer to append a correction. As my fellow pedants have noted, Bonds now holds the record for career, as well as single season, home runs. The asterisk is derived from the Maris/Ruth talk in 1961, as noted, and I was even going to make a Nathan Hale comment, but I was beaten to that punch as well. I feel I must add, however, that the talk of asterisks for Bonds' record are indeed metaphorical. Baseball, like all sports, has changed with the times, and if one plans to denote Bonds' records with asterisks, one must also mark the careers of nearly all players similarly. Outside of the decade of the 1950s, baseball has been played with different schedules, different rules about who may play, different rules about what substances may be applied to the ball, different distances between the mound and the plate, and, currently, questions about what sort of drugs may have been used to enhance performance. Baseball statistics, like much of life, must be viewed in context. -----

rmason Says:
8/10/2007 8:19:55 PM

Not to divert attention from Barry Bonds' arguable asterisk but "Nathan Hale" is a tongue-in-cheek synonym for asterisk. Nathan Hale n. An asterisk (see also splat, ASCII). Oh, you want an etymology? Notionally, from "I regret that I have only one asterisk for my country!", a misquote of the famous remark uttered by Nathan Hale just before he was hanged. Hale was a (failed) spy for the rebels in the American War of Independence. Source: The Jargon File. Groan. It's been at least 20 years since I first saw that entry and it still makes me smile. -----

Andrew Says:
8/10/2007 7:20:57 PM

Some other uses of the asterisk that you did not mention: * It is frequently used to replace letters in obscene or profane words to "sanitize" them for family publications. The hyphen is also frequently used in this way. * Dictionaries use it in etymologies to refer to hypothetical roots. * Online, asterisks can be placed before and after words or phrases to *emphasize* them. This comes from the pre-Web age, when all e-mail and newsgroup posts were plain text. * Several programming languages use the asterisk to denote multiplication. * Some lazy writers use the asterisk to create bulleted lists. -----

Joshua Says:
8/10/2007 5:43:00 PM

I think you might have committed a punctuation error in the podcast title for this tip! In iTunes I see the title listed as "Barry Bonds’s Least Favorite Punctuation Mark". Don't words that end in "s" take only an apostrophe after the terminal "s" such that it should be "Barry Bonds’ Least Favorite Punctuation Mark"? -----

Joshua Says:
8/10/2007 5:40:19 PM

The whole asterisk talk stems back to 1961 when Roger Maris set a new single-season record with 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth's record of 60. The dispute among some baseball commentators of the time was that Ruth set his record in 154 games (the length of the season then). However, when Maris set his record, he only had 59 home runs after 154 games and needed the full 162 games to get to 61. Some who thought Maris not being the athlete they thought Ruth was suggested that Maris' record should have an asterisk next to the 61, though that couldn't even be the case because Major League Baseball publishes no official record book. So to answer your question, yes, the asterisk would be metaphorical in that he's be listed in reference sources as having the career home run title, but people should think of it as disputed and tarnished. -----

Grammar Girl Says:
8/10/2007 4:44:17 PM

Brickin brackin! I'm sorry. As is clear from this show, I know nothing about baseball and got mixed up about the record. (I realize it's not rocket science; I guess I just wasn't paying close attention to the baseball part.) As Ron suggested, I've added an asterisk. But I'm confused about the asterisk not being used for the steroids thing. The articles I did read (and reference) seemed to say that Bonds deserves to have an asterisk next to his record because of the steroid controversy. Are they using "asterisk" metaphorically? -----

Ron Says:
8/10/2007 2:38:19 PM

I'm afraid this show needs an asterisk. Although Barry Bonds does hold the record for most home runs in a season*, he just recently broke the record for most career home runs, surpassing Hank Aaron. * accomplished in October, 2001 -----

Rick Hawn Says:
8/10/2007 2:31:30 AM

Barry Bonds did not JUST break the record for Home Runs in a season. He broke that in 2001. The record he just broke is for CAREER home runs, surpassing Hank Aarons mark. And in Baseball terms, the * is NOT used for the steroids thing, it's used to indicate he bats left-handed. (the # is for a switch-hitter, blank for right-hander) If this was your replacement GG post, I can see why you need more time to research, because you got a WHOLE mess wrong. -----