Pilcrow

Marks a paragraph. Proofreaders use it to flag paragraph breaks, word processors show it as the hidden formatting mark for a return, and legal citations use it to point to numbered paragraphs (¶ 12), doubling it for several (¶¶ 12–14). Set a non-breaking space between the sign and the number in citations.

Biography

medieval manuscripts

The pilcrow began as a capital C for the Latin capitulum — little head, or chapter — and gained its vertical strokes over time, once marking every new paragraph in a manuscript. When printers left blank space for rubricators to add the pilcrows by hand and deadlines won, the empty space itself became the paragraph break. The mark faded into the indentation we still use today.

also known asparagraph markcapitulum

Copy it anywhere

  • Symbol
  • UnicodeU+00B6
  • HTML entity¶
  • CSS content\00B6
  • JavaScript\u00B6
  • URL encoded%C2%B6
  • Windows Alt codeAlt+0182

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