Caret confused with other chevron-shaped characters, such as or , which may occasionally be called carets, too. 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 , "it lacks", from , "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 (cf. ) for a higher
Symbol Hence, "outward sign" of something. The meaning "something which stands for something else" was first recorded in 1590, in Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene". In considering the effect of a symbol on the psyche, in his seminal essay "The Symbol without Meaning" Joseph Campbell proposes the following definition: "A symbol is an energy evoking, and directing, agent". Later, expanding on what he means by this definition Campbell says: Jared Elisha defined symbolism that is something that stands for another, it can be place, object, or a person Heinrich Zimmer gives a concise overview of the nature, and perennial relevance, of symbols.