What is "pilcrow"

Pilcrow \Pil"crow\, n. [A corruption of Paragraph.] (Print.) a paragraph mark, [para]. [Obs.]
--Tusser.

n. The paragraph mark ¶.

The pilcrow (¶), also called the paragraph mark, paragraph sign, paraph, alinea ( Latin: a lineā, "off the line"), or blind P, is a typographical character for individual paragraphs. It is present in Unicode as .

The pilcrow can be used as an indent for separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one long piece of copy, as Eric Gill did in his 1930s book, An Essay on Typography. The pilcrow was a type of rubrication used in the Middle Ages to mark a new train of thought, before the convention of visually discrete paragraphs was commonplace.

The pilcrow is usually drawn similar to a lowercase q reaching from descender to ascender height; the loop can be filled or unfilled. It may also be drawn with the bowl stretching further downwards, resembling a backwards D; this is more often seen in older printing.

Pilcrow is a novel by Adam Mars-Jones first published in 2008 by Faber.