i’ve only just learned about the asterism glyph! A small group of asterisks, used for minor breaks (so more or less decorative, a bit like the aldus leaf❦)
*** ↠ ⁂
⁂
https://decodeunicode.org/en/u+02042
⁂
@fragmentscenario It’s often used as a reference mark for footnotes, and it has an upside-down version as well.
I highly recommend “Shady Characters” by Keith Houston https://shadycharacters.co.uk/books/
@przemek
quickly looked it up in an epub version of the Shady Characters. Sounds like the glyph was more a playful sidenote in type history. i like it even more now. And they could have used the asterism for the layout and decided not to, instead using boring ***
i also checked the Bringhurst, Elements of Typographic Style and he doesn’t mention the ⁂ at all, however showing various * alternatives
@fragmentscenario Binghursts’s book is good. I read it few years ago, but there were some errors (can’t remember now what exactly). I've made a list of books worth reading, including typography and book making: https://sakrajda.eu/inspirations
I can help to find some of them ;)
@przemek
oh beautiful list, also storm type is one of my favourite foundries :))
as you had some german titles on the list as well, i found one very important book missing. “Detailtypografie” by Forssman/De Jong is the most complete compendium about all the “rules”, Do’s and Don’ts of microtypographic questions. It really got me through my design studies and helps a lot working with publishers, editors, authors… not sure if there is an english version of the book… aaand they also didn’t mention the asterism ;-)
@fragmentscenario a very good glyph.