Section sign

The section sign (§) (also known as the section marker, section symbol, paragraph sign, paragraph marker, paragraph symbol, double S or section mark or paragraph mark for short in parts of Europe) is a letter that is an alternate form of ß used in legal code. It is also a punctuation mark. This character is used to refer to a section in legal code. For example, in the APA style: "Title 16 of the United States Code Section 580p" becomes "16 US Code § 580p", which shows the section sign in place of "United States Code Section".

Scilicet ("it may be known") is sometimes rendered using a § mark instead of "viz."

Use

Former logo of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Justice

The section sign is often used when referring to a specific section of a legal code. For example, in Bluebook style, "Title 16 of the United States Code Section 580p" becomes "16 U.S.C. § 580p". 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 other words to describe a paragraph in the English sense. Consequently, in those cases "§" may be read as "paragraph", and may occasionally also be described as a "paragraph sign", but this is a description of its usage, not a formal name.

When duplicated, as §§, it is read as the plural "sections". For example, "§§ 13–21" would be read as "sections 13 through 21", much as pp. (pages) is the plural of p., meaning page. It may also be used with footnotes when asterisk *, dagger †, and double dagger ‡ have already been used on a given page.

It is common practice to follow the section sign with a non-breaking space so that the symbol is kept with the section number being cited.

The section sign is itself sometimes a symbol of the justice system, in much the same way as the Rod of Asclepius is used to represent medicine. For example, Austrian courts use the symbol in their logo.

Unicode

The section sign appeared in several early computer text encodings. It was placed at 0xA7 (167) in ISO-8859-1, a position that was inherited by United as code pointU+00A7 § section sign.

Origin

Two possible origins are often posited for the section sign: most probably, that it is a ligature formed by the combination of two S glyphs (from the Latin signumsectiōnis). Some scholars, however, are skeptical of this explanation.

Others have theorized that it is an adaptation of the Ancient Greek παράγραφος(paragraphos), a catch-all term for a class of punctuation marks used by scribeswith diverse shapes and intended uses.

The modern form of the sign, with its modern meaning, has been in use since the 15th century.

In literature

In Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk, the § symbol is used repeatedly to mean "bureaucracy". In his English translation of 1930, Paul Selver translated it as "red tape".

Keyboard entry

Many platforms and languages have support for the section sign:

• macOS: ⌥ Option+6
• Windows: Alt+0167 or Alt+21
• iOS: & (long press)
• Android: ¶ (long press)
• Linux: Composes!
• Unicode: U+00A7 § SECTION SIGN
• TeX: \S
• HTML: §, §
• URL Encoding: %A7 (Latin1) or %C2%A7 (UTF8)
• Apple Press the §/± button

Some keyboards include dedicated ways to access §:

• United Kingdom (Mac): § (key left of 1)
• Germany: ⇧ Shift+3
• Italy: Shift*ù
• Colemak: AltGr+ \+s
• Croatia: AltGr+ m
• LegalBoard (dedicated key).

Explanatory footnotes

1. The symbol U+2696 ⚖ scales is more typical.