Section sign

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The section sign

The section sign (§; Unicode U+00A7, HTML entity §) is a typographical character used mainly to refer to a particular section of a document, such as a legal code. 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). The sign itself is supposed to have developed from the Hebrew letter gimel (ג)^{[citation needed]}. Its usage was similar to paragraphos.

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 favour of numbered footnotes, usually linked by a superscripted (or, decreasingly, [square bracketed]) number.

[edit] Popular usage

• It is also used to represent a type specimen in animals.

• A section in the United States Code.

• Many Maxis games, from SimCity 3000 onwards, including The Sims, The Sims Online, and The Sims 2, use this symbol (with an unusually small loop) to represent the unit of currency in the SimNation, the simoleon.

• John Cook uses this symbol as a decoration or design element in many of his Sev Wide Web comics.

Polish police use the section sign on a badge indicating specialty in criminal investigation.

• In Poland (and other West Slavic countries), the section sign is commonly associated with concept of law and justice. It is commonly displayed on covers of legal books, especially those concerning criminal law. The section sign is also shown on badges of the crime investigation specialty of the Polish police.

• Similarly, in Danish, Finnish, German and Swedish, the section sign is used nearly exclusively to refer to articles of legal codes, and hence associated likewise with law and legal matters. (In this usage, it is typically read "paragraph" rather than "section".)

• In some online communities, such as the forums on Craigslist, the section sign in the subject of a forum posting indicates that the subject line comprises the entirety of the posting, and the body is empty.

[edit] Typing the section sign

• Mac OS 9: Option + 6
• Mac OS X: Option + 6
• 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
• Microsoft Windows with numeric keypad: Alt + 0167; Alt + 21; Alt + 789; Alt + 123456789 (on numeric keypad)
• Microsoft Windows with an international keyboard: AltGr + Shift + S

Note, the reason Alt + 789 and Alt + 123456789 work are due to the way the keys are read. Alt + 789 works because Microsoft Windows takes the ((number + 256) modulo 256) which results in 21. The reason 123456789 is that Windows only recognises three- or four-digit combinations.