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 (programming) Common Lisp symbol: Symbols can contain whitespace (and all other characters): In Common Lisp symbols with a leading colon in their printed representations are keyword symbols. These are interned in the keyword package. A printed representation of a symbol may include a package name. Two colons are written between the name of the package and the name of the symbol. Packages can export symbols. Then only one colon is written between the name of the package and the name of the symbol. Symbols, which are not interned in a package, can also be created and have a notation: In Prolog,