In 1906 the University of Chicago Press told its compositors to mark footnotes with superior figures, saving symbols for tables and algebra, where a figure might be misread. When symbols were used, the order was asterisk, dagger, double dagger, section mark, parallels and paragraph mark (University of Chicago Press, 1906, rule 214). Most of the lists compared below open the same way, and the marks themselves go back to the editors of Homer.
EdCitation publishes this guide, written from the 1906 manual, scholars of the ancient signs, dictionaries, publishers' style pages and Unicode's code charts, all read on 2 October 2026; where the current Chicago Manual's paywall left a gap, we say so. The footnote's own story is in who invented the footnote, and the Latin that once filled notes in ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit. explained.
Nothing you hand in is written by EdCitation, in any part, and we are proud of that: the notes, the marks and every sentence stay yours. EdCitation looks sources up. Cite a source builds each reference from the publisher's record in six styles, Chicago in the 18th edition's author-date form; it does not build notes and bibliography, so it never places a footnote mark for you.
What is the order of footnote symbols?
The traditional order is asterisk (*), dagger (†), double dagger (‡), section sign (§), parallels (‖) and paragraph mark (¶), then the same marks doubled. Publishers vary the tail, so a journal's own instructions win.
| Mark | Name | Typical use | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| * | Asterisk, or star | First note; corresponding author; p values in APA tables | Chicago (1906); INFORMS (2019); APA (2024) |
| † | Dagger, obelisk or obelus | Second note; equal contribution; an author who has died | Chicago (1906); Nucleic Acids Research (n.d.); INFORMS (2019) |
| ‡ | Double dagger, or diesis | Third note; a second pair of equal contributors | Chicago (1906); Hogan et al. (2019) |
| § | Section mark | Fourth note | Chicago (1906) |
| ‖ | Parallels | Fifth note in Chicago 1906, sixth in LaTeX | Chicago (1906) |
| ¶ | Paragraph mark, or pilcrow | Sixth note in Chicago 1906, fifth in LaTeX | Chicago (1906) |
| # | Number sign | Last of seven table marks | Taylor & Francis (n.d.) |
| **, ††, ‡‡ | Doubled marks | Seventh to ninth notes in LaTeX | LaTeX manual (2026) |
Chicago's sequence, in 1906 and now
Rule 214 of the 1906 Manual of Style allows "asterisks, daggers, etc." only in special cases, then names each mark in words, from "asterisk" or "star" to "paragraph mark", with no doubled forms. The 18th edition (2024) covers the topic in section 13.28, "Sequencing of note numbers and symbols" (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-a), and in 3.80, on table notes; both are behind the subscription. Chicago's Q&A reads 3.80 as making every note reference superscript, though a regular asterisk may serve where a raised one is too small to read (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-b). Several websites say Chicago's current list ends with the number sign; we could not confirm that at source.
Where publishers and software disagree
| Source | Order after the asterisk |
|---|---|
| Chicago, 1906 | † ‡ § ‖ ¶ |
LaTeX's \fnsymbol |
† ‡ § ¶ ‖ ** †† ‡‡ |
| Taylor & Francis, table notes | † ‡ ¶ § ‖ # |
| Taylor & Francis, European Planning Studies bylines | ** † ‡ § |
Taylor & Francis (n.d.) restarts the sequence in each table, and LaTeX's \fnsymbol stops with an error after nine symbols (LaTeX2e Unofficial Reference Manual, 2026). Our view: follow the journal; with no instruction, Chicago's 1906 order is a sound default.
Where did the asterisk come from?
From Alexandria. Its Greek name, asteriskos, means "little star" (Liu, 2014), and its first job was editing Homer.
Aristarchus, Origen and Isidore
Aristarchus of Samothrace edited Homer in the second century BCE (Liu, 2014). Schironi (2017) describes his signs, used before him by Zenodotus and Aristophanes of Byzantium: the obelos, a horizontal stroke, beside a line he judged suspect but kept; the asteriskos beside a line repeated elsewhere; and both for a repeated line out of place. Aristonicus explained the signs in a treatise in the first century BCE (Schironi, 2015).
In the third century CE, Origen used the pair in his Hexapla, setting the Greek Old Testament beside the Hebrew: an asterisk for words added from the Hebrew, an obelus for Greek words the Hebrew lacked (Liu, 2014). In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville listed 26 critical signs. The asterisk, he wrote, marks what was left out, "ut inlucescant", so that it may shine out, and is named from aster, a star (Isidore of Seville, n.d., 1.21.2; our translation).
From correction mark to footnote mark
Because it flagged missing text, scribes used the asterisk to tie a marginal addition to its place, as in the twelfth-century Textus Roffensis (Liu, 2014). Liu reports, from the palaeographer Malcolm Parkes, that Robert Estienne's Latin Bible of 1532 used asterisks to link glosses to the text.
Schironi prints the ancient asteriskos as ※, a cross with four dots, and Liu found that dotted cross in medieval manuscripts. Unicode keeps it as U+203B REFERENCE MARK, with the Japanese name kome (Unicode Consortium, 2026c).
Where did the dagger and double dagger come from?
The dagger is the obelus redrawn. Obelos is Greek for a spit (Schironi, 2017); Isidore calls it an arrow, a lying stroke set against needlessly repeated or false readings to cut them down (Isidore of Seville, n.d., 1.21.3). Liu (2014) traces the obelus to the modern dagger, and Unicode still gives "obelisk" as another name for U+2020 DAGGER (Unicode Consortium, 2026c).
Dates the dictionaries give
The Online Etymology Dictionary dates "obelisk" for a printer's sign like a small dagger to the 1580s, and "dagger" as a reference mark to 1706 (Harper, n.d.-a, n.d.-b). "Double dagger" dates from 1700 to 1710 (Dictionary.com, n.d.-b); its other name, diesis, was first a musical interval smaller than a tone, "for which a double dagger was used as a symbol" (Dictionary.com, n.d.-a). We found no documented first printed double dagger.
Another form of the obelus, a stroke with a dot above and below, survives as ÷: Unicode lists "obelus" as another name for U+00F7 DIVISION SIGN, noting its old use for questionable passages (Unicode Consortium, 2026b). Isidore called that shape the lemniscus.
Why † can mean "died"
In German the mark is read as a cross: Duden (n.d.) gives † as meaning "gestorben", died, as in "†10. 11. 1899". Gregoline (2017), writing for AMA Style Insider, notes that the Oxford English Dictionary marks obsolete words with it.
What does the dagger symbol mean in a paper?
Beside an author's name, a dagger leads to an author note: usually equal contribution, sometimes an author who has died or moved. In a table it marks a note or a probability level.
Equal contribution
Nucleic Acids Research asks for equal contributors to carry a dagger and the footnote "† These authors contributed equally to this work" (Nucleic Acids Research, n.d.). eLife's XML for Hogan et al. (2019) adds a double dagger for a second pair: "These authors also contributed equally to this work".
The mark affects credit. Broderick and Casadevall (2019) analysed 2,898 papers from 1995 to 2017 with a shared first place: in mixed-gender pairs, men were listed first more often, a pattern neither random nor alphabetical order explains. They asked journals to require an explanation, and their own record gives one: author order "was determined both alphabetically and in order of increasing seniority".
An author who has died
The AMA Manual of Style, as Gregoline (2017) quotes it, put a "death dagger" after the name with a note such as "†Deceased"; AMA's style committee then dropped it for a note in the acknowledgements. INFORMS (2019) keeps it, after the affiliation marks, with "†Deceased" above the contact details and an asterisk for the corresponding author. Taylor & Francis (2012), for European Planning Studies, put it before the name, and used a dagger note for an author's current address too.
Table notes in APA Style
APA tables have general, specific and probability notes; the probability note explains asterisks for p values (American Psychological Association, 2021). APA's samples mark specific notes with superscript lowercase letters and end with "*p < .05. **p < .01." (American Psychological Association, 2024). Lazer (2026), on APA's blog, adds that this method may use asterisks or daggers, never in running text or beside exact p values in one table. More in writing up quantitative results.
What are the Unicode code points for footnote symbols?
Each mark has its own code point; use the real character, never a keyboard lookalike.
| Mark | Code point | Unicode name, with other names | LaTeX |
|---|---|---|---|
| * | U+002A | ASTERISK, "star" | \ast |
| † | U+2020 | DAGGER, "obelisk, long cross, oblong cross" | \dag |
| ‡ | U+2021 | DOUBLE DAGGER, "diesis, double obelisk" | \ddag |
| § | U+00A7 | SECTION SIGN | \S |
| ‖ | U+2016 | DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE | \parallel |
| ¶ | U+00B6 | PILCROW SIGN, "paragraph sign" | \P |
| ÷ | U+00F7 | DIVISION SIGN, "obelus" | |
| ※ | U+203B | REFERENCE MARK, "Japanese kome" |
Names come from Unicode's version 18.0 charts (Unicode Consortium, 2026a, 2026b, 2026c), commands from the LaTeX manual. Parallels is U+2016, not two keyboard bars, as Taylor & Francis's PDF typed it.
How do I use footnote symbols in my own paper?
Number ordinary notes, keep symbols for tables and bylines, and type the real characters.
- Read the brief or the journal's instructions. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads an assignment's instructions into a checklist that includes the citation style.
- Number the notes in your text, as Chicago's 1906 rule asked.
- Pick one order and keep it: the journal's, or * † ‡ § ‖ ¶.
- Start again in each table, as Taylor & Francis does.
- In an APA table, choose one method for p values: exact values, or asterisks defined in the probability note.
- Keep the marks out of your reference list. Build each entry from its DOI in Cite a source, then paste the list into Verify references.
Does a dagger in the byline change the reference?
No. A reference names the authors in byline order without their marks. We tested EdCitation's free tools on 2 October 2026, quoting outputs exactly.
Cite a source on a paper with † and ‡
Given DOI 10.7554/eLife.48901, Cite a source read Crossref's record, which has no marks, found no retraction, and built:
Hogan, T., Nowicka, M., Cownden, D., Pearson, C. F., Yates, A. J., & Seddon, B. (2019). Differential impact of self and environmental antigens on the ontogeny and maintenance of CD4+ T cell memory. eLife, 8, Article e48901. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48901
The daggers are gone; the note stays with the article. The in-text form, (Hogan et al., 2019), names only one of the two equal first authors, the problem Broderick and Casadevall (2019) raise. The plus in CD4+, raised in the article, is plain in Crossref's record and so in the entry.
Chicago author-date on an ordinary DOI
From the DOI of Schironi's 2015 article, Chicago 18 author-date gave:
Schironi, Francesca. 2015. “Aristarchus’ Work in Progress: What Did Aristonicus and Didymus Read of Aristarchus?” The Classical Quarterly 65 (2): 609–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838815000233.
In the text: (Schironi 2015). Author-date is the only Chicago EdCitation builds; it does not build notes and bibliography, where footnote marks live, so write notes from Chicago's own samples. See the Chicago author-date referencing guide.
Verify references with the daggers left in
We pasted the Hogan entry into Verify references with † and ‡ left after four names, beside Broderick and Casadevall's. Both came back verified: "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." Nothing pointed out the stray marks, so deleting them is your job.
Which EdCitation tools help with notes and symbols?
Cite a source is the best tool for the part of a paper footnote marks never reach: the reference. EdCitation looks each source up in the publisher's record and never writes one, which is why the Hogan entry came back with six real names in byline order; no chatbot, composing text instead of reading a record, can promise that. It takes a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address, builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, screens for retraction, and is free with no account.
Find sources searches about 300 million published works. Verify references, also free, marks each entry verified, "check this" or not found, never showing "could not check" as "not found". References from a file, in Pro at $8 a month, checks every reference in an uploaded paper and matches each citation to the list (Pricing).
Quick questions
What order do footnote symbols go in?
Asterisk, dagger (†), double dagger (‡), section sign (§), parallels (‖), then paragraph mark (¶), as Chicago's 1906 Manual of Style gave them. Follow your journal where it differs.
What does a dagger next to an author's name mean?
It marks an author note, most often equal contribution; some publishers use it for an author who has died. The note under the byline says which.
What do asterisks mean in an APA table?
They mark p values, explained in a probability note such as "*p < .05." Specific notes use superscript letters.
What are the Unicode code points for the dagger and double dagger?
U+2020 and U+2021, in Unicode's General Punctuation block.
Can EdCitation add footnote symbols or write my notes?
No. EdCitation's Cite a source builds references, its Chicago in the 18th edition's author-date form, and never writes notes, marks or any sentence of your paper.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2021). Table setup. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures/tables
- American Psychological Association. (2024). Sample tables. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures/sample-tables
- Broderick, N. A., & Casadevall, A. (2019). Gender inequalities among authors who contributed equally. eLife, 8, Article e36399. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.36399
- Dictionary.com. (n.d.-a). Diesis. In Dictionary.com Unabridged. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/diesis
- Dictionary.com. (n.d.-b). Double dagger. In Dictionary.com Unabridged. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/double-dagger
- Duden. (n.d.). Kreuz. In Duden online. https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Kreuz
- Gregoline, B. (2017, February 17). Ding dong: The death dagger is dead. AMA Style Insider. https://amastyleinsider.com/2017/02/17/ding-dong-death-dagger-dead/
- Harper, D. (n.d.-a). Dagger. In Online etymology dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/dagger
- Harper, D. (n.d.-b). Obelisk. In Online etymology dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/obelisk
- Hogan, T., Nowicka, M., Cownden, D., Pearson, C. F., Yates, A. J., & Seddon, B. (2019). Differential impact of self and environmental antigens on the ontogeny and maintenance of CD4+ T cell memory. eLife, 8, Article e48901. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48901
- INFORMS. (2019). INFORMS style guide (Version 1.6) [PDF]. https://pubsonline.informs.org/pb-assets/INFORMS_style_guide-1.6-1574695301483.pdf
- Isidore of Seville. (n.d.). Etymologiarum sive originum liber I [Etymologies, book 1]. The Latin Library. https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/isidore/1.shtml
- LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual. (2026, July). https://latexref.xyz/dev/latex2e.html
- Lazer, S. (2026, February 2). Methods of reporting significance in tables and figures: Pick one. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/methods-tables-figures
- Liu, Y. (2014, August 5). Asterisks in the Middle Ages. Medieval Codes. http://www.medievalcodes.ca/2014/08/asterisks-in-middle-ages.html
- Nucleic Acids Research. (n.d.). Policies. Oxford Academic. https://academic.oup.com/nar/pages/policies
- Schironi, F. (2015). Aristarchus’ work in progress: What did Aristonicus and Didymus read of Aristarchus? The Classical Quarterly, 65(2), 609–627. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838815000233
- Schironi, F. (2017). Tautologies and transpositions: Aristarchus’ less-known critical signs. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 57(3), 607–630. https://grbs.library.duke.edu/index.php/grbs/article/view/15947
- Taylor & Francis. (n.d.). Further notes on style [PDF]. https://files.taylorandfrancis.com/nejmstyle.pdf
- Taylor & Francis. (2012). Taylor & Francis style no.: Social science style A; European Planning Studies (CEPS) [PDF]. https://files.taylorandfrancis.com/style_ceps.pdf
- Unicode Consortium. (2026a). C0 controls and Basic Latin: Range 0000–007F [Code chart]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf
- Unicode Consortium. (2026b). C1 controls and Latin-1 Supplement: Range 0080–00FF [Code chart]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf
- Unicode Consortium. (2026c). General punctuation: Range 2000–206F [Code chart]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-a). Chapter 13: Source citations: Overview [Contents]. The Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.). https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed18/part3/ch13/toc.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-b). Special characters (Q&A No. 20). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/SpecialCharacters/faq0020.html
- University of Chicago Press. (1906). Manual of style: Being a compilation of the typographical rules in force at the University of Chicago Press, to which are appended specimens of types in use. https://archive.org/details/manualofstylebei00univrich