Dagger (†) and double dagger (‡)
The dagger and double dagger are footnote reference marks used after the asterisk. Their named references are † and ‡, which differ only by the capital letter.
At a glance
- Character
- † ‡
- Named entity
- † ‡
- Decimal reference
- † ‡
- Hex reference
- † ‡
- Unicode code point
- U+2020, U+2021
- Unicode name
- DAGGER, DOUBLE DAGGER
- In the entity reference
- Punctuation
In detail
The traditional sequence of footnote reference marks runs asterisk, dagger, double dagger, section sign, parallel bars, pilcrow, and then doubles each mark in turn if a page needs more. The sequence exists because it does not collide with numbers in a table, which is why scientific tables still use it where the body text uses superscript numerals.
The entity names are one of the few places in HTML where capitalisation carries meaning. † and ‡ are two different characters, and the reference is case sensitive, so a template that lowercases attribute or entity output will silently turn every double dagger into a single one. It is a real bug and it is invisible until someone counts the footnotes.
The single dagger also has a separate life in biographical writing, where it prefixes a date of death, sitting opposite the asterisk that prefixes a date of birth. That convention is common in German and central European reference works and it is worth knowing before you strip the character as decoration from imported data.
For actual footnotes on the web, the mark is a link target rather than a typographic flourish. Wrap it in a superscript anchor pointing at the note, give the anchor a descriptive accessible name, and provide a way back. The character alone announces as dagger, which tells a listener nothing about what it references.
Examples
<p>
Results were stable
<sup><a href="#fn1" id="ref1" aria-label="Footnote 1">†</a></sup>
across all runs.
</p>
<p id="fn1">† Excluding the first warm up run. <a href="#ref1">Back</a></p><p>† is U+2020 and ‡ is U+2021.</p>
<p>&DAGGER; is not an entity at all and renders literally.</p>Things that catch people out
- Lowercasing generated HTML breaks the double dagger. Any pipeline that normalises case has to leave character references alone.
- Superscripting the mark with a smaller font size rather than the sup element loses the semantics, so the reference reads as ordinary text at an odd size.
- In a table of numbers the dagger can be mistaken for a plus or a cross at small sizes. Give footnote marks enough size contrast to be legible in the smallest cell.
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