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The English word pilcrow derives from the Ancient Greek: παράγραφος [parágraphos], "written in the side" or "written in the margin". In Old French, parágraphos became the word paragraphe and later pelagraphe. The earliest English language reference to the modern pilcrow is in 1440, with the Middle English word pylcrafte. [4]
In English and most European languages where words are read left-to-right, text is usually aligned "flush left", [1] meaning that the text of a paragraph is aligned on the left-hand side with the right-hand side ragged. This is the default style of text alignment on the World Wide Web for left-to-right text. [2] Quotations are often indented ...
These guides—e.g., Jacobi in the U.K. (1890) [15] and MacKellar, Harpel, and De Vinne (1866–1901) in the U.S. [16] —indicated that sentences should be em-spaced, and that words should be 1/3 or 1/2 em-spaced. The relative size of the sentence spacing would vary depending on the size of the word spaces and the justification needs. [17]
The section sign is frequently used along with the pilcrow (or paragraph sign), ¶, to reference a specific paragraph within a section of a document. While § is usually read in spoken English as the word "section", many other languages use the word "paragraph" exclusively to refer to a section of a document (especially of legal text), and use ...
The 1959 edition of the United States Government Printing Office Style Manual prescribed an em space, equivalent to two word spaces, between sentences. [21] The 1967 edition, however, states: "To conform with trade practice, a single justification space (close spacing) will be used between sentences."
In word processing and desktop publishing, a hard return or paragraph break indicates a new paragraph, to be distinguished from the soft return at the end of a line internal to a paragraph. This distinction allows word wrap to automatically re-flow text as it is edited, without losing paragraph breaks.
The very short final line of a paragraph composed of a single word (highlighted blue) is a runt. The first line of a paragraph beginning at the end of a page (highlighted green) is called an orphan (sometimes called a widow). The last line of a paragraph continuing on to a new page (highlighted yellow) is a widow (sometimes called an orphan).
Very short sections and subsections clutter an article with headings and inhibit the flow of the prose. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheadings. Headings follow a six-level hierarchy, starting at 1 and ending at 6. The level of the heading is defined by the number of equals signs on each side of the ...