Useless fact
What is the name of the paragraph symbol?
The typographical symbol used to mark the start of a paragraph (¶) is officially called a pilcrow.
The symbol known as the pilcrow (¶) has a rich history that dates back to ancient Greece, where the word paragraphos referred to a short stroke marking a division in text. As the concept evolved through Latin and Old French, the term transformed from paraf into pelaf, pylcraf, and eventually the Middle English pilcrow. In medieval manuscripts, scribes wrote text continuously without line breaks to save expensive parchment. To help readers navigate the dense blocks of text, a specialist known as a rubricator would add the pilcrow symbol in bright red ink to mark the beginning of a new thought or section. When the printing press was invented, typesetters originally left blank spaces at the start of paragraphs for these rubricators to draw the symbols by hand. However, as demand for books grew, rubricators could not keep up with the rapid pace of printing. The planned spaces were left empty, which accidentally birthed the modern convention of indenting the first line of a paragraph rather than using a symbol to mark its start.
Why this is true — The term is documented in major English dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary, as the standard name for the paragraph symbol.
Sources
- Pilcrow Definition & Meaning Dictionary.com
- PILCROW | English meaning Cambridge University Press