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Pilcrow

In the field of publishing, the pilcrow () is a handwritten and a typographical glyph (visual character) used to identify a paragraph. In editorial production the pilcrow typographic character also is known as the paragraph mark, the paragraph sign, the paragraph symbol, the paraph, and the blind P.[1]

This article is about the typographical mark. For the novel, see Pilcrow (novel).

U+00B6 PILCROW SIGN (¶)

U+00A7 § SECTION SIGN

  • U+204B ⁋ REVERSED PILCROW SIGN
  • U+2761 ❡ CURVED STEM PARAGRAPH SIGN ORNAMENT
  • U+2E3F ⸿ CAPITULUM
  • U+2E4D ⹍ PARAGRAPHUS MARK

In writing and in editorial practise, authors and editors use the pilcrow glyph to indicate the start of separate paragraphs, and to identify a new paragraph within a long block of text without paragraph indentions, as in the book An Essay on Typography (1931), by Eric Gill.[2] In the Middle Ages, the practise of rubrication (type in red-ink) used a red pilcrow to indicate the beginning of a different train of thought within the author's narrative without paragraphs.[3]


The typographic character of the pilcrow usually is drawn like a lowercase letter-q, reaching from the descender to the ascender height; the bowl (loop) can be filled or empty. Moreover, the pilcrow can also be drawn with the bowl extended downward, to resemble a reversed letter-D.

in , it is often used whenever one cites a specific paragraph within pleadings, law review articles, statutes, or other legal documents and materials. It is also used to indicate a paragraph break within quoted text;[13]

legal writing

in academic writing, it is sometimes used as an in-text referencing tool to make reference to a specific paragraph from a document that does not contain page numbers, allowing the reader to find where that particular idea or statistic was sourced. The pilcrow sign followed by a number indicates the paragraph number from the top of the page. It is rarely used when citing books or journal articles;

in style guides, a pilcrow may be used to indicate an anchor link;[14]

web publishing

in , it indicates an instruction that one paragraph should be split into two or more separate paragraphs. The proofreader inserts the pilcrow at the point where a new paragraph should begin;

proofreading

in some Anglican and Episcopal churches, it is used in the printed order of service to indicate that instructions follow; these indicate when the congregation should stand, sit, and kneel, who participates in various portions of the service, and similar information. King's College, Cambridge uses this convention in the service booklet for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. This is analogous to the writing of these instructions in red in some rubrication conventions.

high-church

The pilcrow remains in use in modern documents in the following ways:


The pilcrow is also often used in word processing and desktop publishing software:


The pilcrow may indicate a footnote in a convention that uses a set of distinct typographic symbols in turn to distinguish between footnotes on a given page; it is the sixth in a series of footnote symbols beginning with the asterisk.[1] (The modern convention is to use numbers or letters in superscript form.)

Windows

Alt

and macOS: ⌥ Opt+7

Classic Mac OS

Linux

compose key

: ¶ (introduced in HTML 3.2 (1997)), or ¶

HTML

in insert mode: Ctrl+K PI     (upper-case i, not a digit 1 or a lower-case letter L)

Vim

: \P

TeX

: \P or \textpilcrow

LaTeX

phones (Gboard): ?123=/<

Android

Apple iPhones and iPads may require the user to set up a text replacement shortcut without installing custom keyboard software. Tools may be required to easily generate a pilcrow, or other special characters.[18]

[17]

Paragraph signs in non-Latin writing systems[edit]

In Thai, the character ๏ marks the beginning of a stanza and ฯะ or ๚ะ marks the end of a stanza.[19]


In Sanskrit and other Indian languages, text blocks are commonly written in stanzas. Two vertical bars, ॥, called a "double daṇḍa", are the functional equivalent of a pilcrow.[20]


In Amharic, the characters ፠ and ፨ can mark a section/paragraph.


In China, the 〇, which has been used as a zero character since the 12th century, has been used to mark paragraphs in older Western-made books such as the Chinese Union Version of the Bible.