The Arabic star is a punctuation mark added to Unicode 1.1 by political and cultural reasons to use it in typing instead of asterisk (), which might take a six-lobed form <small>(<sup>â»</sup>)</small> in some typesets reminding a six-pointed Star of David (â¡) or might be even mistaken for it in a print of poor quality.
The Arabic star is given a distinct character in Unicode, , in the range Arabic punctuation. Despite its name, the character might take an eight-lobed form in some typesets, which could be related to octagram shape of the Rub el Hizb sign (ÃÂ).
In many modern fonts, however, the asterisk is five- or six-pointed, and the Arabic star is sometimes six- or eight-pointed. The two symbols are compared below (the display depends on your browser's default sans-serif font).
In Unicode, Arabic and similar stars are encoded at:
In some displays, the use of the ÃÂ character can cause the text directionality to change.