In book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

s and document

Document

The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...

s, a section is a subdivision, especially 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...

.

Sections are visually separated from each other with a section break, typically consisting of extra space between the sections. They are a concern in the process of typography

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

 and pagination

Pagination

Pagination is the process of dividing information into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages. Today the latter are usually simply instances of the former that have been outputted to a printing device, such as a desktop printer or a modern printing press...

, where it may be desirable to have a 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:...

 follow a section break for the sake of aesthetics or readability.

In fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

, sections often represent scenes, and accordingly the space separating them is sometimes also called a scene break.

Section form and numbering

In written narrative such as fiction, sections are not usually numbered or named. Section breaks are used to signal various changes in a story, including changes in time, location, point-of-view character, mood

Mood (psychology)

A mood is a relatively long lasting emotional state. Moods differ from emotions in that they are less specific, less intense, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event....

, tone

Tone (literature)

Tone is a literary technique that is a part of composition, which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, somber, playful, serious, ironic, guilty, condescending, or many other possible attitudes...

, emotion

Emotion

Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...

, and pace

Pace

Pace may refer to:*Pace , the speed at which movement occurs*Pace , a unit of length*"Peace" in Italian, sometimes written on a rainbow flag...

. As a fiction-writing mode, the section break can be considered a transition

Transition (fiction)

Transitions in fiction are words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or punctuation that may be used to signal various changes in a story, including changes in time, location, point-of-view character, mood, tone, emotion, and pace...

, similar to a chapter break.

Some documents, especially legal documents, may have numbered sections. e.g. Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Constitution of Canada's Charter of Rights that lists what the Charter calls "fundamental freedoms" theoretically applying to everyone in Canada, regardless of whether they are a Canadian citizen, or an individual or...

, or Internal Revenue Code section 183

Internal Revenue Code section 183

Section 183 of the United States Internal Revenue Code , sometimes referred to as the "hobby loss rule", limits the losses that can be deducted from income which are attributable to hobbies and other not-for-profit activities. Generally, losses which occur in for-profit activities are not limited...

. 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...

 (§) may be used to referenced sections and subsections. Subsections are often written in lowercase Roman numerals

Roman numerals

The numeral system of ancient Rome, or Roman numerals, uses combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet to signify values. The numbers 1 to 10 can be expressed in Roman numerals as:...

 e.g. Section 51(xxvi) of the Australian Constitution

Section 51(xxvi) of the Australian Constitution

Section 51 of the Australian Constitution, commonly called 'the race power', is the subsection of Section 51 of the Australian Constitution granting the Australian commonwealth power to make special laws for people of any race....

.

A document may also be considered to be divided into sections by its headings and subheadings, which may be used for a table of contents

Table of contents

A table of contents, usually headed simply "Contents" and abbreviated informally as TOC, is a list of the parts of a book or document organized in the order in which the parts appear...

. For example, the hierarchical sections used in the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

, can be compiled into a table of contents for an article. Many books, however, only have chapter headings in the table of contents.

While a chapter may be divided by section breaks, a group of chapters is conventionally divided by a "part", often with a Roman numeral, e.g. "Part II".

Reference material may be divided into sections. For example, the section headers of a Chinese dictionary

Section headers of a Chinese dictionary

Section headers , also known as index keys or classifiers, are graphic portions of Chinese characters which are used for organizing entries in Chinese dictionaries into sections which all share the same graphic part...

.

Flourished section breaks

Space between paragraphs in a section break is sometimes accompanied by an asterism

Asterism (typography)

In typography, an asterism, from the Greek astēr , is a rarely used, and "nearly obsolete", symbol consisting of three asterisks placed in a triangle . It is used to, "indicate minor breaks in text," call attention to a passage, or to separate sub-chapters in a book...

 (either proper or manual * * *), a horizontal rule, fleuron

Fleuron (typography)

A fleuron or printers' flower is a typographic element, or glyph, used originally as an ornament for typographic compositions — often, for example, to compose borders on title pages of historic books. Fleurons are stylized forms of flowers or leaves; the term derives from the Old French word floron...

s, or by other ornamental symbols. An ornamental symbol used as section break does not have a generally accepted name. Such a typographic device can be specifically referred to as dinkus, space break symbol, paragraph separator, paragraph divider, horizontal divider, thought break, or as an instance of filigree or flourish. Ornamental section breaks can be created using 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....

s, rows of lozenge

Lozenge

A lozenge , often referred to as a diamond, is a form of rhombus. The definition of lozenge is not strictly fixed, and it is sometimes used simply as a synonym for rhombus. Most often, though, lozenge refers to a thin rhombus—a rhombus with acute angles of 45°...

, dingbat

Dingbat

A dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character"....

s, or other miscellaneous symbols

Miscellaneous Symbols

The Miscellaneous Symbols Unicode block contains various glyphs representing things from a variety of categories: Astrological, Astronomical, Chess, Dice, Ideological symbols, Musical notation, Political symbols, Recycling, Religious symbols, Trigrams, Warning signs and Weather.-Tables:Note: These...

. Fonts such as Webdings

Webdings

Webdings is a TrueType dingbat font developed in 1997 and included in all versions of Microsoft Windows since that time. Most of the glyphs have no Unicode character equivalents.-New York City:...

 and Wingdings

Wingdings

Wingdings are a series of dingbat fonts which render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes...

 include many such glyphs.

In HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, horizontal rules can be generated using the hr tag, which generates a paragraph-level thematic break. For more ornate presentational rules, CSS

CSS

-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...

can be used to replace the line with an image.