A paragraph may refer to any of the following:
1. A paragraph is a section of text containing one or more sentences, which together express a single idea or unit of information. In modern typesetting, a paragraph is usually delimited by a visual separator or paragraph break. The separator may be a line break, vertical spacing such as a blank line, indentation of the first word, a horizontal line, or some combination.
Paragraph marks. The paragraph mark or pilcrow (¶) represents a paragraph break.
- Paragraph Marks. In Word the definition of a paragraph is the paragraph mark plus all the characters that precede the paragraph mark up to but not including the previous paragraph mark. The number of paragraph marks in a document is equal to the number of paragraphs in the document. You can enter a paragraph mark into a document by pressing Enter.
- A paragraph symbol or pilcrow is a formatting mark that helps represent the end of a paragraph. The graphic shown on this page is an example of a paragraph symbol. Formatting marks must be enabled for you to see this symbol in your document.
In some cases, a paragraph break may be represented by the paragraph symbol (¶), also known as a pilcrow (see below).
What key do you press to start a new paragraph?
To start a new paragraph in a word processing program (e.g., Microsoft Word), press Enter on the keyboard. In other programs that do not support this feature, you would need to press the Enter key twice to start a new paragraph.
What can I do if I don't want to start a new paragraph?
In programs like Microsoft Word, when you press Enter, it may move to the next paragraph instead of the next line. In these programs to go to the next line, press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter instead of only Enter.
How to select a paragraph
A paragraph can be selected by clicking at the start of the paragraph while holding down dragging the mouse pointer to the end of the paragraph. You can also triple-click text in a paragraph to immediately select a paragraph.
Related pages
2. A paragraph symbol or pilcrow is a formatting mark that helps represent the end of a paragraph. The graphic shown on this page is an example of a paragraph symbol. Formatting marks must be enabled for you to see this symbol in your document.
TipMicrosoft Word Paragraph Symbol Meaning
To create this mark in Windows, open the character map tool, locate the paragraph symbol, and then copy and paste it into your document.
Paragraph Symbol Word Mac
3. When referring to HTML, the <p> tag is used to create a paragraph in an HTML web page.
Word Paragraph Symbol Meanings
Block of text, EOL, Formatting mark, HTML, Line break, Orphan, Paragraph formatting, Word processor terms