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pilcrow (PIL-croh) - n., a symbol (¶) used to indicate paragraph breaks.
Lemme make that a bit bigger:
Which is not, as you might think, a reversed P that's short for paragraph, but rather a script C crossed by one or two vertical lines (⸿) that's short for for Latin capitulum, chapter. Back in the day of manuscripts, before the convention of visibly discrete paragraphs was invented and text was in big long blocks, they came up with this mark to indicate a change of thought -- which is what we use paragraphing for today. The name is, believe it or not, a cognate of paragraph: it started as Ancient Greek paragraphos, a short stroke that marked a break in sense (from para-, beside, + graphein, write), then in Old French this became pelagraphe/pelagreffe, then in Middle English we got pylcrafte (15th century), and then pilcrow (16th century). Paragraph itself was reimported (via Late Latin) when we invented the modern typographic convention.
---L.
Lemme make that a bit bigger:
Which is not, as you might think, a reversed P that's short for paragraph, but rather a script C crossed by one or two vertical lines (⸿) that's short for for Latin capitulum, chapter. Back in the day of manuscripts, before the convention of visibly discrete paragraphs was invented and text was in big long blocks, they came up with this mark to indicate a change of thought -- which is what we use paragraphing for today. The name is, believe it or not, a cognate of paragraph: it started as Ancient Greek paragraphos, a short stroke that marked a break in sense (from para-, beside, + graphein, write), then in Old French this became pelagraphe/pelagreffe, then in Middle English we got pylcrafte (15th century), and then pilcrow (16th century). Paragraph itself was reimported (via Late Latin) when we invented the modern typographic convention.
---L.
