What the pilcrow means
The ¶ sign is called a pilcrow, and it marks a new paragraph. Medieval scribes did not always start paragraphs on a new line; instead, a rubricator added a pilcrow, often in red ink, to show where a new thought began. The sign grew out of a C for capitulum, Latin for "chapter", later drawn with vertical strokes.
Today you meet it in three places: in word processors, where ¶ marks every paragraph break; in proofreading, where an editor writes ¶ to mean "start a new paragraph here"; and in legal writing, where ¶ 12 means paragraph 12 of a document and ¶¶ 4–6 means paragraphs 4 to 6.
The ¶ marks in Microsoft Word
If ¶ marks suddenly cover your Word document, Show/Hide ¶ is turned on. It reveals hidden formatting: ¶ at the end of each paragraph, dots for spaces and arrows for tabs. These marks never print. Click the ¶ button on the Home tab, or press Ctrl + Shift + 8 on Windows (Cmd + 8 on a Mac), to turn them off again.
Showing the marks is handy when a layout behaves strangely: you can spot double spaces, extra empty paragraphs and manual line breaks at a glance.
How to type the paragraph symbol
On a Mac, press Option + 7. On Windows, hold Alt and type 0182 on the number pad (Alt + 20 also works). In Word, you can type 00B6 and press Alt + X. In HTML use ¶, and in LaTeX use \P. On Android, Gboard has ¶ on the =\< symbols page.
The reversed pilcrow ⁋ and the ornamental ❡ have no shortcut, so copy them from this page. To cite numbered sections of a law, use the section symbol §; for footnote marks such as † and ‡, see punctuation symbols.