pilcrow

The pilcrow, commonly called the paragraph mark or paragraph sign, is the typographic symbol ¶ used to indicate the beginning of a new paragraph. In digital text it is encoded as Unicode U+00B6. It is distinct from the section sign (§), which marks a different kind of reference.

Origins and history: The pilcrow traces its use to medieval manuscript copying and early type setting, where scribes and printers employed the character as a visible cue for paragraph breaks. Its shape evolved from an elaborate version of the letter P and varied with different scripts and typefaces. In traditional printing, a separate pilcrow was inserted at the start of each paragraph, but in modern typography it is less common in body text, with indentation and spacing taking its place; the mark persists in editing, proofreading, and some stylistic conventions.

Name and usage: The English term pilcrow is traditional, and its exact etymology is uncertain. The symbol is widely referred to as the paragraph sign or paragraph mark in many languages. In editing and word processing, the pilcrow may be shown or hidden as a formatting mark to help visualize paragraph boundaries.