Caret facts for kids

The caret is an inverted V-shaped grapheme. It is the spacing character ^ in ASCII (at code point 5E_hex) and other character sets that may also be called a hat, control, uparrow, or, less frequently, chevron, xor sign, 'to the power of' (exponent), pointer (in Pascal), or wedge.

Origins

Proofreading mark

The caret was originally and continues to be used in handwritten form as a proofreading mark to indicate where a punctuation mark, word, or phrase should be inserted into a document. The term comes from the Latin caret, "it lacks", from carēre, "to lack; to be separated from; to be free from". The caret symbol is written below the line of text for a line-level punctuation mark, such as a comma, or above the line as an inverted caret for a higher character, such as an apostrophe; the material to be inserted may be placed inside the caret, in the margin, or above the line.

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  Carets telling reader to insert a comma, an apostrophe, and quotation marks

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  Caret telling a reader to insert a letter

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  Caret telling reader to insert a word

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  Caret telling reader to change a word

Images for kids

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  Typewriter with French (AZERTY) keyboard: à, è, é, ç ù have dedicated keys; the circumflex and diaeresis accents have dead keys.

See also

In Spanish: Caret para niños