Punctuation | Dagger †

The dagger, or obelus or obelos (greek for Roasting split), or obelisk. A varient of the dagger is the double dagger ‡ , is also called a diesis or Cross of Lorraine.

The dagger was first used in books for the Roman Catholic Church as a marker for a minor pause in a psalm, the major pauses was parked by an asterisk.


More recently, the Dagger is used to indicate a footnote. a superscript number can be included with the dagger if multiple things are footnoted on a page. Being that the dagger resembles a Christian cross, in Christian areas it is printed to represent someone who has passed away.

In taxonomic nomenclature, the dagger symbol is used to denote extinct taxa.

The London Underground uses it to represent "points to remember"


Dagger and double-dagger symbols in a variety of fonts, showing the differences between stylized and non-stylized characters