How to type Pilcrow (Paragraph)
To type Pilcrow (Paragraph) (¶), press Alt + 0182 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + 7 on Mac, or write ¶ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+00B6 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 00b6 on Linux, or 00b6 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Pilcrow Sign
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+00B6
- Windows
- Alt + 0182
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0182 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | Option + 7 | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ¶ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+00B6 | PILCROW SIGN |
Other punctuation symbols
¶ lives in the Latin-1 Supplement block (U+0080-U+00FF), the accented letters and common signs Western European languages needed. Within Unicode it is classified as Po, a punctuation mark.
What Pilcrow (Paragraph) is used for
In mathematical notation ¶ is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mathparagraph$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ¶ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are paragraph mark, alinea and paraph. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Pilcrow (Paragraph) is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Pilcrow (Paragraph)
The standard recognises ¶ under another name as well: paragraph sign. That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
Unicode annotates ¶ directly. Against U+00B6 the code chart carries the note “Section sign in some European usage”. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from ¶ to reversed pilcrow sign (U+204B), curved stem paragraph sign ornament (U+2761) and capitulum (U+2E3F). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Pilcrow (Paragraph) looks nearly right but not quite.
How Pilcrow (Paragraph) behaves in software
¶ is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
Every way to write Pilcrow (Paragraph)
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+00B6 |
| Decimal | 182 |
| UTF-8 bytes | C2 B6 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 B6 |
| HTML entity | ¶ |
| HTML numeric | ¶ or ¶ |
| CSS | \00B6 |
| JavaScript | \u00B6 |
| Python | \u00B6 |
| URL-encoded | %C2%B6 |
| LaTeX, in prose | \P |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mathparagraph$ |
| SVG | 00B6.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ¶ arrives as ¶
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes C2 B6 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The Latin-1 range is where this happens most, because it is the range every legacy system thought it already handled. Nothing is lost, and retyping will not help: the fix is at the reading end, which has to be told the text is UTF-8. An empty rectangle is the opposite complaint, and means the encoding is right and the font has no glyph for U+00B6.