U+FE61 "﹡" Small Asterisk Unicode Character

U+FE61 "﹡" Small Asterisk is a small version of the standard asterisk symbol, belonging to the Small Form Variants block, which provides smaller versions of punctuation marks for compatibility with East Asian typography, particularly in vertical text or narrow contexts. It is typically used in CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) text layouts where a compact asterisk is needed to fit within character spacing without breaking the visual flow. The character is distinct from the regular asterisk U+002A due to its reduced size and intended placement in ideographic text environments.