Where did the term ‘caret’ originate for a text insertion point? I’ve tried to google for it, but this is something difficult to locate (even my historic computer reference books don’t seem to help here).
I’m reasonably sure I remember some archaic Wang/mainframe apps that used a literal caret (ie: ^) as a text insertion mark, but I couldn’t remember one for the life of me.
This is an example using the caret as an insertion point^ Yeah, I know that I can find the meaning of caret by googling it directly, but I’m looking for for a real etymology here – ie: someone who has used a text editor system with a real, live caret symbol as a text insertion point. This sort of stuff is interesting to me – like the origin of the use of the term ‘bug’ for a mouse pointer.
It comes from pen-and-paper text editing, where a ^ mark is used to indicate inserted text. The mark is named for its purpose according to the Latin derivation noted by others.