Section sign

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§ Punctuation
apostrophe ( ’ ' ) brackets ( ( ) ), ( [ ] ), ( { } ), ( < >) colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dashes ( ‒, –, —, ― ) ellipses ( …, ... ) exclamation mark ( ! ) full stop/period ( . ) guillemets ( « » ) hyphen ( -, ‐ ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( ‘ ’, “ ” ) semicolon ( ; ) slash/stroke ( / ) solidus ( ⁄ ) Word dividers spaces ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (␠) (␢) (␣) interpunct ( · ) General typography ampersand ( & ) at sign ( @ ) asterisk ( * ) backslash ( \ ) bullet ( • ) caret ( ^ ) copyright symbol ( © ) currency generic: ( ¤ ) specific: ฿, ¢, $, €, ƒ, ₲, ₴, ₭, £, ₦, ¥, ₩, ₪,₮ daggers ( †, ‡ ) degree ( ° ) ditto mark ( 〃 ) inverted exclamation mark ( ¡ ) inverted question mark ( ¿ ) number sign/pound/hash ( # ) numero sign ( № ) ordinal indicator (º, ª) percent (etc.) ( %, ‰, ‱ ) pilcrow ( ¶ ) prime ( ′ ) registered trademark ( ® ) section sign ( § ) service mark ( ℠ ) sound recording copyright symbol ( ℗ ) tilde ( ~ ) trademark ( ™ ) underscore/understrike ( _ ) vertical/broken bar, pipe ( |, ¦ ) Uncommon typography asterism ( ⁂ ) falsum ( ⊥ ) index/fist ( ☞ ) therefore sign ( ∴ ) because sign ( ∵ ) interrobang ( ‽ ) irony mark/percontation point ( ؟ ) lozenge ( ◊ ) reference mark ( ※ ) tie ( ⁀ )
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The section sign (§, Unicode U+00A7, HTML entity §), also called the "sectional symbol" or "squiggly," is a typographical character used mainly to refer to a particular section of a document, such as a legal code.^[1] It is frequently used along with the pilcrow (¶), or paragraph sign. When duplicated, as §§, it is read as the plural "sections" (§§ 13–21), much as "pp." (pages) is the plural of "p." (page). For an effect comparable to the contemporary use of bold type, early scribes would double stroke letters, hence the sign was developed from a double stroked letter S.^{[citation needed]}

Like the dagger (†) and double dagger (‡), it is also sometimes used to link to a footnote where the asterisk (*) is already in use on a given page; however, these usages are declining in favor of numbered footnotes, usually linked by a superscripted and/or square bracketed number.

[edit] Typing the section sign

• Mac OS U.S. Keyboard layout: Option + 6. U.S. Extended Keyboard layout: Option + 5.
• Mac OS CSA (Canadian French) Keyboard layout: Option + Shift + S.
• Mac OS U.K. Keyboard layout: § key.
• X Window System, with a Compose Key: Compose + s + o, or Compose + ! + s
• TeX: \S
• Vim, in insert mode: Ctrl + K, SE; Ctrl + V, 167
• Emacs: C-x 8 S
• Windows Alt code: Alt + 0167; Alt + 21; Alt + 31509; Alt + 333333; Alt + 789; (on numeric keypad)
• US-International keyboard layout: AltGr + Shift + S
• HTML: §^[2]

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (October 2009)

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