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pilcrow

/ˈpɪlkroʊ/
IPA guide

Other forms: pilcrows

A pilcrow is a typographical character that looks like this: ¶. It's used to mark the beginning of a new paragraph.

The pilcrow looks a bit like a backward-facing capital P, but it started out centuries ago as a capital C with a slash through it. It stood for the Latin word capitulum, meaning "little head" or "chapter." Back when paper was very expensive, scribes wasted no space by indenting or skipping a line at the start of a new paragraph. Instead, they used this symbol in the margin. Today, you'll see it if you toggle to the formatted view of a document on your computer. And professional editors use it to show authors where to start a new paragraph.

Definitions of pilcrow
  1. noun
    a symbol, used in printing and copyediting, that marks the start of a new paragraph; ¶
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