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Starratings are a type ofrating scale using astar glyph or similartypographical symbol. It is used by reviewers for ranking things such as films, TV shows, restaurants, and hotels. For example, a system of one to five stars is commonly used inhotel ratings, with five stars being the highest rating.
Similar systems have been proposed for electing politicians in the form ofscore voting andSTAR voting.
Repeated symbols used for a ranking date toMariana Starke's 1820 guidebook, which usedexclamation points to indicate works of art of special value:
...I have endeavored... to furnish Travellers with correct lists of the objects best worth notice...; at the same time marking, with one or more exclamation points (according to their merit), those works which are deemed peculiarly excellent.[1]
Murray's Handbooks for Travellers and then theBaedeker Guides (starting in 1844) borrowed this system, using stars instead of exclamation points, first for points of interest and later for hotels.[2]
TheMichelin restaurant guide introduced a star as a restaurant rating in 1926, which was expanded to a system of one to three stars in 1931.[3]
In 1915,Edward O'Brien began editingThe Best American Short Stories. This annual compiled O'Brien's personal selection of the previous year's best short stories. O'Brien claimed to read as many as 8,000 stories a year, and his editions contained lengthy tabulations of stories and magazines, ranked on a scale of zero to three stars, representing O'Brien's notion of their "literary permanence."[4] He further listed stories with a ranking of three stars "in a special 'Roll of Honor.'" In this list, O'Brien attached an additional asterisk to those stories that he personally enjoyed.[5]
Oliver Herford's essaySay it with Asterisks, quips "Never, I think, were a mob of overworked employees so pitifully huddled together in an ill-ventilated factory as are the Asterisks in this Sweatshop of Twaddle."[6] Literary editor Katrina Kenison dismisses O'Brien's grading systems as "excessive at best, fussy and arbitrary at worst."[4]
Book reviewers generally do not use a star-rating system though there are exceptions. TheWest Coast Review of Books rates books on a scale of one ("poor") to five ("superior") stars.[7] According to editor D. David Dreis, readers love the ratings but publishers don't.[8]
In the 31 July 1928 issue of theNew York Daily News, the newspaper's film criticIrene Thirer began grading movies on a scale of zero to three stars. Three stars meant 'excellent,' two 'good,' and one star meant 'mediocre.' And no stars at all 'means the picture's right bad,'" wrote Thirer.Carl Bialik speculates that this may have been the first time a film critic used a star-rating system to grade movies.[9] "The one-star review ofThe Port of Missing Girls launched the star system, which the newspaper promised would be 'a permanent thing.'[9]
According to film scholarGerald Peary, few newspapers adopted this practice until the French film magazineCahiers du cinéma "started polling critics in the 1950s and boiling their judgment down to a star rating, with abullet reserved for movies that the magazine didn't like."[9] The highest rating any film earned was five stars. The British film magazineSight and Sound also rated films on a scale of one to four stars.[10] Some critics use a "half-star" option in between basic star ratings. Leonard Maltin goes one further and givesNaked Gun33+1⁄3: The Final Insult a2+1⁄3 star rating.[11]
Critics do not agree on what the cutoff is for a recommendation, even when they use the same scale.Gene Siskel andRoger Ebert "both consider[ed] a three-star rating to be the cutoff for a "thumbs up" on their scales of zero to four stars.[12] Film criticDave Kehr—who also uses a 0–4 star scale—believes "two stars is a borderline recommendation".[12] On a five-star scale, regardless of the bottom rating, 3 stars is often the lowest positive rating, though judging on a purely mathematical basis, 2 1/2 stars would be the dividing line between good and bad on a 0–5 scale.Common Sense Media uses a scale of one to five, where 3 stars are "Just fine; solid" and anything lower is "Disappointing" at best.[13]
There is no agreement on what the lowest rating should be. Some critics make "one star" or a "half-star" their lowest rating. Dave Kehr believes that "one star" indicates the film has redeeming facets,[12] and instead uses zero stars as his lowest rating.
Examples of rating scales:
Critics have different ways of denoting the lowest rating when this is a "zero". Some such asPeter Travers display empty stars.Jonathan Rosenbaum andDave Kehr use a round black dot.[18]Leslie Halliwell uses a blank space.[19]The Globe and Mail uses a "0", or as their former film critic dubbed it, the "death doughnut".[20] Roger Ebert used a thumbs-down symbol.[21] Other critics use ablack dot.
Critics also do not agree on what the lower ratings signify, let alone the lowest rating. While Maltin's and Scheuer's guides respectively explain that lowest rated films are "BOMB(s)" and "abysmal", British film criticLeslie Halliwell instead writes that no star "indicates a totally routine production or worse; such films may be watchable but are at least equally missable."[19] Like Halliwell and Dave Kehr, film criticJonathan Rosenbaum believes one-star films have some merit, however unlike Halliwell, Rosenbaum believes that no stars indicate a "worthless" movie.[18]Roger Ebert occasionally gave zero stars to films he deemed "artistically inept and morally repugnant."[22] Scheuer's guide calls "one and a half star" films "poor", and "one star" films "bad".[23]
Not all film critics have approved of star ratings. Film scholarRobin Wood wondered ifSight and Sound readers accepted "such blackening of their characters."[24]Jay Scott of Canada'sThe Globe and Mail was an opponent of using symbols to summarize a review and wrote in 1992 that "When Globe editors first proposed the four-star system of rating movies about a year ago, the response from Globe critics was, to put it mildly, underwhelming."[20] More recently,Mark Kermode has expressed a dislike of star ratings (assigned to his online reviews but not his print or radio reviews) on the grounds that his verdicts are sometimes too complex to be expressed as a rating.[25]
Star ratings are also given out atstand-up comedy performances andtheatre productions. Star ratings are given at theEdinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. Since 2010, theBritish Comedy Guide has collected over 4,300 reviews of around 1,110 different acts, across 83 different publications in the form of a star rating.[26]
The use of star ratings is controversial because the public may ignore the reviews and concentrate more the star ratings alone.[27]
Star ratings are not often used to rate the quality of a video game but are rather used within certain games for varying purposes. One notable use of the star system is to grade a player's performance in completing alevel with up to three stars, used in many modern multi-level games likeAngry Birds. This three-star rating system challenges the player torepeat and fully master previously beaten levels in order to receive a perfect 3-star rating, which may confer other benefits or bonus content. Another use of star ratings is to denote the rarity of characters in video games where players are tasked in collecting numerous characters, such asStar Wars: Galaxy of Heroes andMarvel: Contest of Champions, in which stronger and rarer characters are marked with more stars to make them appear more valuable. Stars are also used to rank a game or stage's difficulty (such as in theSNES version ofStreet Fighter II and its updates), or to rate the attributes of a selectable character or, insports games, a team.
Restaurant guides and reviewers often use stars inrestaurant ratings. The Michelin system reserves star for exceptional restaurants, and gives up to three; the vast majority of recommended restaurants have no star at all. Other guides now use up to four or five stars, with one-star being the lowest rating. The stars are sometimes replaced by symbols such as a fork or spoon. Some guides use separate scales for food, service, ambiance, and even noise level.
The Michelin system remains the best known star system. A single star denotes "a very good restaurant in its category", two stars "excellent cooking, worth a detour", and three stars, "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey".[28]
Michelin stars are awarded only for the quality of food and wine; the luxury level of the restaurant is rated separately, using a scale of one ("quite comfortable") to five ("luxury in the traditional style") crossed fork and spoon symbols.
Hotel luxury is often denoted by stars.
Other classifiers, such as theAAA Five Diamond Award, usediamonds instead of stars to express hotel rating levels.
Hotels are assessed in traditional systems and rest heavily on the facilities provided. Some consider this disadvantageous to smaller hotels whose quality of accommodation could fall into one class but the lack of an item such as anelevator would prevent it from reaching a higher categorization.[29]
In recent years[when?] hotel rating systems have also been criticized by some[who?] who argue that the rating criteria for such systems are overly complex and difficult for the general public to understand. It has been suggested that the lack of a unified global system for rating hotels may also undermine the usability of such schemes.
In the UK, providers and comparison websites often use stars to indicate how feature-rich financial products are.[30]
The most seniormilitary ranks in all services are classified by a star system in many countries, ranging fromone-star rank which typically corresponds tobrigadier,brigadier general,commodore orair commodore, to the most seniorfive-star ranks, which includeAdmiral of the Fleet,Grand Admiral,Field Marshal,General of the Army andMarshal of the Air Force—some five-star ranks only exist during large-scale conflicts.
Recruits entering Americancollege football are commonly ranked on a five-star scale, with five representing what scouts think will be the best college players.[31][32]
International organisations use a star rating to rank the safety of transportation.EuroRAP have developed a Road Protection Score which is a scale for Star Rating roads for how well they protect the user from death or disabling injury when a crash occurs. The assessment evaluates the safety that is 'built into' the road through its design, in combination with the way traffic is managed on it.[33] The RPS protocol has also been adapted and used by AusRAP, usRAP and iRAP.
Euro NCAP awards 'star ratings' based on the performance of vehicles in crash tests, including front, side and pole impacts, and impacts with pedestrians.
The United StatesNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also uses a star ranking to rank the safety of vehicles in crash tests, including front, side, pole impacts, and rollovers, with 5 stars being the most secure.[34]
Someweb content voting systems use five-star grades. This allows users to distinguish content more precisely than with binary "like buttons".
Manyrecommender systems, such asMovieLens orAmazon.com, ask people to express preferences using star ratings, then predict what other items those people are likely to enjoy. Predictions are often expressed in terms of the number of predicted stars.
TheUnicode Standard encodes several characters used for star ratings in theMiscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block:[35][36]
| Character | Code point | Name |
|---|---|---|
| ★ | U+2605 | BLACK STAR |
| ☆ | U+2606 | WHITE STAR |
| ⯨ | U+2BE8 | LEFT HALF BLACK STAR |
| ⯩ | U+2BE9 | RIGHT HALF BLACK STAR |
| ⯪ | U+2BEA | STAR WITH LEFT HALF BLACK |
| ⯫ | U+2BEB | STAR WITH RIGHT HALF BLACK |
The STAR WITH LEFT HALF BLACK and LEFT HALF BLACK STAR are intended for use inleft-to-right contexts where the half star is positioned to the right of one or more whole stars, whereas the STAR WITH RIGHT HALF BLACK and RIGHT HALF BLACK STAR are intended for use inright-to-left contexts (such asArabic orHebrew) where the half star is positioned to the left of one or more whole stars.[35]