Pilcrow
Encyclopedia
The pilcrow also called the paragraph mark, paragraph sign, paraph, alinea (Latin
: a lineā, "off the line"), or blind P, is a typographical character
commonly used to denote individual paragraph
s. It is present in Unicode
as .
The pilcrow can be used as an indent for separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one long piece of copy, as Eric Gill
did in his 1930s book, An Essay on Typography. The pilcrow was used in the Middle Ages
to mark a new train of thought
, before the convention of physically discrete paragraphs was commonplace.
The pilcrow is usually drawn similar to a lowercase q
reaching from descender
to ascender height; the loop can be filled or unfilled. It may also be drawn with the bowl stretching further downwards, resembling a backwards D
; this is more often seen in older printing.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary
, the word pilcrow "apparently" originated in English
as an unattested version of the French
pelagraphe, a corruption of paragraph; the earliest reference is c.1440.
In form, the pilcrow is understood to have originated as a letter C, for capitulum
, "chapter" in Latin. This C was the paraph symbol that replaced in the function of marking off paragraphs the Greek-style paragraphos
, and other symbols including the section sign
. Moreover, the paraph also could be marked with a full-height sign similar to ¢ (cents) or with a double slash
, originally symbols indicating a note from the scribe
to the rubricator
.
s and page layout
programs to mark the presence of a carriage return
control character
at the end of a paragraph. It is also used as the icon
on a class of toolbar
button which shows or hides the pilcrow and similar "hidden characters", including tabs
, whitespace
, and page break
s. In typing
programs, it is used to mark a return that one needs to type.
In legal writing
, it is used whenever one must cite
a specific paragraph within pleadings, law review
articles, statute
s, or other legal documents and materials.
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. It is most commonly used to refer to a paragraph in an HTML page, allowing the reader to find where that particular idea or statistic was sourced. Convention states that 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 proofreading
, it is used to indicate that one paragraph should be split into two or more separate paragraphs; the pilcrow is inserted at the point at which a new paragraph should begin.
In some high-church 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.
Online
, it is used in some blogs and wikis to denote permalink
s (cf. Purple Numbers
).
The pilcrow may be used to indicate a footnote
. It is the sixth in a series of footnote symbols beginning with the asterisk
.
In Unicode
, the character
is .
The pilcrow character
can be added as a visible, printable character on the Windows
operating system
using the shortcut
alt + 0182. Depending on the font used, this character will have varied appearance, and in some cases, may be replaced by an alternate glyph
entirely.
On a Mac OS
computer the pilcrow character can be generated by typing Option
+ 7.
, the traditional paragraph sign (rendered as 〇) is a thin circle
about the same size as a Chinese character
. This same mark also serves as a “zero” character, as a stylistic
variation of the Chinese
character for “zero”. As a paragraph sign, this mark only appears in older books, commonly found in the Chinese Union Version
of the Bible. Its current use is generally as a “zero” character. However, it can also be found in some editions of King James Version Bibles and the Book of Mormon.
In Thai
, the character can be used to mark the end of a chapter
or document
.
In Sanskrit and other Indian languages text blocks used to be written in stanzas. Two bars || represented Pilcrow.
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
: a lineā, "off the line"), or blind P, is a typographical character
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
commonly used to denote individual paragraph
Paragraph
A paragraph is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. A paragraph consists of one or more sentences. The start of a paragraph is indicated by beginning on a new line. Sometimes the first line is indented...
s. It is present in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
as .
The pilcrow can be used as an indent for separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one long piece of copy, as Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
did in his 1930s book, An Essay on Typography. The pilcrow was used in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
to mark a new train of thought
Train of thought
The train of thought, stream of thought, trail of thought, or chain of thought refers to the interconnection in the sequence of ideas expressed during a connected discourse or thought, as well as the sequence itself, especially in discussion how this sequence leads from one idea to another.When a...
, before the convention of physically discrete paragraphs was commonplace.
The pilcrow is usually drawn similar to a lowercase q
Q
Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones...
reaching from descender
Descender
In typography, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. The line that descenders reach down to is known as the beard line....
to ascender height; the loop can be filled or unfilled. It may also be drawn with the bowl stretching further downwards, resembling a backwards D
D
D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the...
; this is more often seen in older printing.
History and etymology
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
, the word pilcrow "apparently" originated in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as an unattested version of the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
pelagraphe, a corruption of paragraph; the earliest reference is c.1440.
In form, the pilcrow is understood to have originated as a letter C, for capitulum
Capitulum
The term Capitulum can refer to several things:*In botany, a type of flower head where the bracts are located under the basis, such as a daisy's*Also in botany, the top of a Sphagnum moss plant with compact clusters of young branches....
, "chapter" in Latin. This C was the paraph symbol that replaced in the function of marking off paragraphs the Greek-style paragraphos
Paragraphos
Paragraphos literally meant in ancient Greek papyri anything that was written beside the main text, e.g. marginal note or sign to mark the close or beginning of a sentence. There are many variants of this symbol...
, and other symbols including the section sign
Section sign
The section sign , also called the "double S", "sectional symbol" or signum sectiōnis, is a typographical character used mainly to refer to a particular section of a document, such as a legal code. It is frequently used along with the pilcrow , or paragraph sign...
. Moreover, the paraph also could be marked with a full-height sign similar to ¢ (cents) or with a double slash
Slash (punctuation)
The slash is a sign used as a punctuation mark and for various other purposes. It is now often called a forward slash , and many other alternative names.-History:...
, originally symbols indicating a note from the scribe
Scribe
A scribe is a person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession and helps the city keep track of its records. The profession, previously found in all literate cultures in some form, lost most of its importance and status with the advent of printing...
to the rubricator
Rubrication
Rubrication was one of several steps in the medieval process of manuscript making. Practitioners of rubrication, so-called rubricators, were specialized scribes who received text from the manuscript's original scribe and supplemented it with additional text in red ink for emphasis...
.
Contemporary use
The pilcrow has been used in desktop publishing software such as a desktop word processorWord processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
s and page layout
Page layout
Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements on a page.- History and development :...
programs to mark the presence of a carriage return
Carriage return
Carriage return, often shortened to return, refers to a control character or mechanism used to start a new line of text.Originally, the term "carriage return" referred to a mechanism or lever on a typewriter...
control character
Control character
In computing and telecommunication, a control character or non-printing character is a code point in a character set, that does not in itself represent a written symbol.It is in-band signaling in the context of character encoding....
at the end of a paragraph. It is also used as the icon
Icon (computing)
A computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an...
on a class of toolbar
Toolbar
In a graphical user interface, on a computer monitor, a toolbar is a GUI widget on which on-screen buttons, icons, menus, or other input or output elements are placed. Toolbars are seen in office suites, graphics editors, and web browsers...
button which shows or hides the pilcrow and similar "hidden characters", including tabs
Tab key
Tab key on a keyboard is used to advance the cursor to the next tab stop.- Origin :The word tab derives from the word tabulate, which means "to arrange data in a tabular, or table, form"...
, whitespace
Whitespace (computer science)
In computer science, whitespace is any single character or series of characters that represents horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character does not correspond to a visual mark, but typically does occupy an area on a page...
, and page break
Page Break
A page break is a marker in an electronic document that tells the document interpreter that the content which follows is part of a new page. A page break causes a form feed to be sent to the printer during spooling of the document to the printer.-Form feed:...
s. In typing
Typing
Typing is the process of inputting text into a device, such as a typewriter, cell phone, computer, or a calculator, by pressing keys on a keyboard. It can be distinguished from other means of input, such as the use of pointing devices like the computer mouse, and text input via speech...
programs, it is used to mark a return that one needs to type.
In legal writing
Legal writing
Legal writing is a type of technical writing used by lawyers, judges, legislators, and others in law to express legal analysis and legal rights and duties.- Authority :...
, it is used whenever one must cite
Legal citation
Legal citation is the practice of crediting and referring to authoritative documents and sources. The most common sources of authority cited are court decisions , statutes, regulations, government documents, treaties, and scholarly writing....
a specific paragraph within pleadings, law review
Law review
A law review is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, normally published by an organization of students at a law school or through a bar association...
articles, statute
Statute
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations...
s, or other legal documents and materials.
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. It is most commonly used to refer to a paragraph in an HTML page, allowing the reader to find where that particular idea or statistic was sourced. Convention states that 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 proofreading
Proofreading
Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or computer monitor to detect and correct production-errors of text or art. Proofreaders are expected to be consistently accurate by default because they occupy the last stage of typographic production before publication.-Traditional method:A proof is...
, it is used to indicate that one paragraph should be split into two or more separate paragraphs; the pilcrow is inserted at the point at which a new paragraph should begin.
In some high-church Anglican and Episcopal
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
churches, it is used in the printed order of service to indicate that instructions follow; these indicate when the congregation
Local church
A local church is a Christian congregation of members and clergy.Local church may also refer to:* Local churches , a Christian group based on the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, and associated with the Living Stream Ministry publishing house.* Parish church, a local church united with...
should stand, sit, and kneel, who participates in various portions of the service, and similar information. King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
uses this convention in the service booklet for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Online
ONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
, it is used in some blogs and wikis to denote permalink
Permalink
A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems support such links...
s (cf. Purple Numbers
Purple Numbers
Purple Numbers is a suite of tools that allows one to address paragraphs of HTML content. It was originally conceived by Douglas Engelbart for his creation of hypertext. The concept was later implemented in PurpleWiki by Eugene Eric Kim and Chris Dent. The name comes from the faint, purple numbers...
).
The pilcrow may be used to indicate a footnote
Footnote
A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text, or both...
. It is the sixth in a series of footnote symbols beginning with the asterisk
Asterisk
An asterisk is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star...
.
In Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, the character
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....
is .
The pilcrow character
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....
can be added as a visible, printable character on the Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
using the shortcut
Keyboard shortcut
In computing, a keyboard shortcut is a finite set of one or more keys that invoke a software or operating system operation when triggered by the user. A meaning of term "keyboard shortcut" can vary depending on software manufacturer...
alt + 0182. Depending on the font used, this character will have varied appearance, and in some cases, may be replaced by an alternate glyph
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
entirely.
On a Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
computer the pilcrow character can be generated by typing Option
Option key
The Option key is a modifier key present on Apple keyboards. It is located between the Control key and Command key on a typical Mac keyboard. There are two option keys on modern Mac desktop and notebook keyboards, one on each side of the space bar....
+ 7.
Paragraph signs in non-Latin writing systems
In ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, the traditional paragraph sign (rendered as 〇) is a thin circle
Circle
A circle is a simple shape of Euclidean geometry consisting of those points in a plane that are a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any of the points and the centre is called the radius....
about the same size as a Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
. This same mark also serves as a “zero” character, as a stylistic
Style (fiction)
In fiction, style is the manner in which the author tells the story. Along with plot, character, theme, and setting, style is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.-Fiction-writing modes:...
variation of the Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
character for “zero”. As a paragraph sign, this mark only appears in older books, commonly found in the Chinese Union Version
Chinese Union Version
The Chinese Union Version is the predominant Chinese language translation of the Bible used by Chinese Protestants. It is considered by many to be the Chinese Protestant’s Bible....
of the Bible. Its current use is generally as a “zero” character. However, it can also be found in some editions of King James Version Bibles and the Book of Mormon.
In Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
, the character can be used to mark the end of a chapter
Chapter (books)
A chapter is one of the main divisions of a piece of writing of relative length, such as a book. Chapters can be numbered in the case of such writings as law code or they can be titled. For example, the first chapters of some well-known novels are titled:*"The Boy Who Lived" – Harry Potter...
or document
Document
The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...
.
In Sanskrit and other Indian languages text blocks used to be written in stanzas. Two bars || represented Pilcrow.