pilcrow

[prettygoodword]

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.

Comments

[dewline]

Good to know the backstory!

[prettygoodword]

These sorts of word histories are fun stuff.

[dewline]

In this case, it's the symbology that caught my eye. First time I remember of this sort of thing catching my attention, it was a radio report on the story of the interrobang. CBC Radio used to have a series called And Sometimes Y, which was how that report got aired.

[oracne]

I love pilcrows!

[prettygoodword]

So do I.

It's not exactly true that I once lost a job because of pilcrows, but I was once not asked back for a second day at a certain temp position, after I repeatedly disagreed with the manager about which direction of the pilcrow's bump faces. That may not have been the only reason, but it did happen.