Dagger (typography) - Modern Usage

Modern Usage

The dagger is usually used to indicate a footnote, in the same way an asterisk is. The dagger is only used for a second footnote when an asterisk is already used. A third footnote employs the double dagger. Additional footnotes are somewhat inconsistent and represented by a variety of symbols, e.g., parallels (||) and the pilcrow (¶), some of which were nonexistent in early modern typography. Partly because of this, superscript numerals have increasingly been used in modern literature in the place of these symbols, especially when several footnotes are required. Some texts use asterisks and daggers alongside superscripts, using the former for per-page footnotes and the latter for endnotes.

The dagger is also used to indicate death, extinction, or obsolescence. The asterisk and the dagger, when placed beside years, are used to indicate year of birth and year of death respectively. When placed immediately before or after a person's name, it indicates that the person is deceased. In this usage, it is referred to as the "death dagger". In the Oxford English Dictionary, the dagger symbol is used to indicate an obsolete word.

The dagger (†) should not be confused with the Christian cross (✝, U+271D), the character "box drawings light vertical and horizontal" (┼, U+253C), or other cross symbols. The double dagger should not be confused with the alveolar click (, U+01C2), the Cross of Lorraine (☨, U+2628), or the patriarchal cross (☦, U+2626).

• In mathematics and, more often, physics, a dagger is used to denote the Hermitian adjoint of an operator; for example, A† denotes the adjoint of A. This notation is sometimes replaced with an asterisk, especially in Mathematics. An operator is said to be Hermitian if A† = A.
• In textual criticism and in some editions of works written before the invention of printing, daggers are used to enclose text that is believed not to be original.
• In biology, the dagger next to a taxon name indicates that the taxon is extinct.
• In cataloging, a double dagger is used to delimit MARC subfields.
• In chess notation, the dagger may be suffixed to a move to signify the move resulted in a check, and a double dagger is used to denote checkmate. This is a stylistic variation on the more common '+' (plus sign) for a check and '#' (octothorpe) for checkmate.
• In chemistry, the double dagger is used in chemical kinetics to indicate a transition state species.
• In psychological statistics the dagger is used to indicate that a difference between two figures is not significant to a p<0.05 level, however is still considered a "trend" or worthy of note. Commonly this will be used for a p-value between 0.1 and 0.05.
• On a cricket scorecard or team list, the dagger indicates the team's wicket-keeper.
• In military history, a dagger is often placed next to the name of a commander who is killed in action.
• The asteroid 37 Fides, the last asteroid to be assigned an astronomical symbol before the practice faded, was assigned the dagger.
• In philology, the dagger indicates an obsolete form of a word or phrase.
• In the early printings of the King James Bible a dagger is used to indicate a literal translation of a word or phrase is to be found in the margin. When used the margin begins with an abbreviation (Heb. Gk. Chald. Lat.) for the original language.
• In the Geneva Bible a double dagger is used to indicate a literal translation of a word or phrase is to be found in the margin. When used the margin begins with an abbreviation (Heb. Gk. Chald. Lat.) for the original language.

While daggers are freely used in English-language texts, they are often avoided in other languages because of their similarity to the Christian cross. In German, for example, daggers are commonly employed only to indicate a person's death or the extinction of a word, language, species or the like.