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The typographical symbol dagger (†) has several meanings. Possibly its most common use is as a footnote marker.

According to You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies (Partridge, 1953), when it is used for this purpose, it must be used for second footnotes only; the first footnote should be indicated by an asterisk (*), the third a double dagger (‡) and further footnotes other symbols or numbers.

Where does Patridge's rule fall on a scale of one to ten, where one is "this is just one guy's random opinion" and ten is "this is a widely accepted rule of English and any deviation from it is unarguably incorrect"?

This question was inspired by this Meta Stack Overflow question about the use of daggers on Stack Exchange site FAQ pages.

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Pops
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  • Shows you didn't check out CMoS in your research before asking. – Kris Jan 05 '12 at 05:28
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    @Kris I think you need a subscription for it. –  Jan 05 '12 at 19:26
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    @Kris, although I had heard of the Chicago guide before, I didn't know that it was considered authoritative (and I certainly didn't have a subscription to it). The resources I did check didn't address this issue at all, although I could have looked harder. – Pops Jan 05 '12 at 23:43
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    It is not at all unusual to see the dagger used as the only note marker, or to have the asterisk skipped and the dagger and double dagger used. Often the asterisk is apt to be mistaken for text (eg, in a math treatise) and so it's use as a footnote marker is ill-advised. – Hot Licks Jan 02 '16 at 01:48
  • Well I came into this question thinking of a physical dagger and wondering of the seemingly self evident implications of a note being given with a dagger quivering may holding it up – BladorthinTheGrey Jul 21 '16 at 21:12

5 Answers5

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The dagger (also known as an obelisk) is properly used for the second footnote. The asterisk is for the first, and the double dagger is for the third. This is supported by several websites:

And so on. The general consensus is that the asterisk is first, the dagger is second, and the double dagger is third. I give him a 9.

Edit: I looked at the Chicago Manual of Style Online, and they gave this information:

Where symbols are used, the sequence is as follows:

  1. * (asterisk; but do not use if p values occur in the table; see 3.78)
  2. † (dagger)
  3. ‡ (double dagger)
  4. § (section mark)
  5. || (parallels)
  6. # (number sign, or pound)
Community
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    The Chicago Manual of Style link will most likely not be viewable for those without subscriptions. –  Jan 05 '12 at 00:22
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    I would say more generally that you would avoid an asterisk as a footnote if it has other uses that might confuse, not just p values. For example, if you're using it to denote ungrammaticality, then I would jump straight to the dagger. – Brett Reynolds Jan 05 '12 at 01:22
  • @BrettReynolds There is most likely more on the topic in the full article, I just removed the most relevant bits. –  Jan 05 '12 at 01:23
  • @Mahnax 'removed the most relevant'? – Kris Jan 05 '12 at 05:26
  • @Kris I mean that I took the most relevant pieces of information from the Chicago Manual of Style, not that I removed the most relevant things from my answer. Ooops. –  Jan 05 '12 at 05:27
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Grammar Girl offers the same advice, citing Chicago Manual of Style. She writes:

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.

Chicago Manual is pretty much a ten on your scale.

MetaEd
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    If you ever get to triple asterisks, you're using too many footnotes. – Peter Shor Jan 05 '12 at 00:59
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    @PeterShor: Surely too many *! footnotes? – Tim Lymington Feb 03 '13 at 00:28
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    If you get to triple asterisks you should consider that there is an unlimited supply of integers. – Stuart F Mar 09 '23 at 09:16
  • @StuartF but superscript integers mean powers in mathematical or scientific work and are a common format for citations (and end-notes). As my thesis used that citation style, my (few) footnotes and (many) tablenotes used superscript lowercase letters. Tablenotes look a lot like footnotes, especially when tables are presented at the bottom of the page, as mine were, so I wanted to use the same format. One of my tables has 10 notes so symbols wouldn't have been right. Tablenotes also often apply to numbers which may end with powers (of 10): compare 1.5×10¹⁰ ᵃ and 1.5×10¹⁰ ¹. – Chris H Mar 09 '23 at 13:03
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LaTeX's \@fnsymbol specifies asterisk, dagger, double-dagger, section, pilcrow, double-bar, double-asterisk, two daggers, and two double-daggers; which is close to CMoS.

I was taught (at the London College of Printing) that numbered footnotes should be used (a) when there are several per page and their usage is systematic; (b) where there is a need for cross-reference between them; or (c) where there is a need for other writers to refer to them (this covers practically all academic, research, and technical writing). Use symbols only when there are very few footnotes and when there is no reason to number them for reference.

Peter Flynn
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While I generally agree with the other answers I think you have to take the context of your writing into consideration. For instance, while writing about computer related topics asterisk tends to have special meaning. Similarly parallels looks very much like two pipes, which also has special meaning.

Chris S
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    I think that would enter into the question of whether to use this footnoting system at all, rather than into how to use it correctly. – MetaEd Jan 05 '12 at 16:15
  • I agree with @MetaEd, you may be better off simply using numbered notes. – Hugo Mar 28 '12 at 20:36
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According to Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks (Houston, 2013), a deeply researched work devoted entirely to the role of such marks, the order has long been * , †, ‡, §, ||, #, and then doubled up in that order if more are needed.

However, for a block quotation from a secondary source that is required to feature any original citations appearing in that secondary source, a numerical citation reference mark could precede the block (at the end the signal phrase) and all original citations be retained yet distinguished from other notes, via the use of symbols.

Typothalamus
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