Also known as the paragraph mark, the pilcrow, for such a humble, rarely used mark, has a surprisingly complex history. Indeed, as Houston writes, the pilcrow is “intertwined with the evolution ...

You’ve probably run into a pilcrow at one point or another. They’re the typographical symbols that indicate the beginning of a new paragraph (¶). Used as far back as Ancient Greece ...

Ultimately, though, the utility of the paragraph overrode the need for efficiency and became so important as to warrant a new line—prefixed with a pilcrow, of course. ¶ Having attained such a ...

Weirdly enough, the Pilcrow lives on. Microsoft Office products use it as the paragraph character. However, you get it in lieu of newline (i.e. carriage return/line feed) when you hit the enter ...