- published: 16 Nov 2015
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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 paragraphs. It is present in Unicode as U+00B6 ¶ pilcrow sign (HTML: ¶
¶
).
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.