Paragraph Characters in Word
Dougie Reid
I have a question which has been puzzling me for a while now, do anybody
know what the technical names is for the Paragraph Characters in Word ?
With thanks in advance
Dougie.
Suzanne S. Barnhill
"pilcrow." Note that it has a peculiarity in Word: it cannot be copied and
pasted outside Word. You can insert a paragraph symbol from Insert Symbol,
and you can copy/paste it within Word (though not into the Find dialog), but
if you try to copy and paste into another application, you'll find it fails.
Whenever I need to stick one in an email, I have to get it from Character
Map (I don't do ANSI codes because my numeric keypad is inaccessible). And
of course if you copy and paste an actual paragraph mark (as opposed to the
printed symbol), you are copying and pasting a paragraph.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
Dougie Reid <dougie...@virginnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eMt75.2511$4C4....@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
Jonathan West
If you mean the character which shows up as a paragraph mark when you have
non-printing characters showing, I am reliably informed it is called a
Pilcro.
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
MultiLinker - Automated generation of hyperlinks in Word
Conversion to PDF & HTML
http://www.multilinker.com
Word FAQs at http://www.multilinker.com/wordfaq
Please post any follow-up in the newsgroup. I do not reply to Word questions
by email
Dougie Reid wrote in message ...
Tonya Marshall
(English), origin (indexed Apr 8 1997)
Pil"crow (?), n. [A corruption of Paragraph.] (Print.) a paragraph mark, ś.
[Obs.] Tusser.
Michael Loughridge
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" <sbar...@zebra.net> wrote in message
news:eYUk2n64$GA.1440@cpmsftngp04...
> The traditional (albeit somewhat abstruse) name for the paragraph symbol
is
> "pilcrow."
Suzanne
I am sure that not many people know what a pilcrow is!!! - but where did you
find this word? I have searched a number of dictionaries and encyclopaedia
but none contain it. Please understand I am not challenging your
knowledge/expertise - I am just interested in unusual words.
Michael
Suzanne S. Barnhill
recently, I was among them. Like you, I am interested in unusual words (did
you know that one name for # is "octothorpe"?), so I picked up on a post
sometime in 1998 in which someone asked a question about the "pilcro" (I
think cutting and pasting was the issue). I immediately adopted this word
and began throwing "pilcro" into my posts with gay abandon until I ran
across another post referring to a "pilcrow." With some trepidation, I
belatedly looked it up in the dictionary and discovered, to my chagrin, that
"pilcrow" is apparently the correct spelling, though the derivation is
dubious. So I can't take credit for knowing or even discovering this word,
and I'd be interested to know who it was that first called the word to my
attention.
It's also not surprising that you couldn't find it in "a number of
dictionaries." Where I found it was in Webster's Third New International
Dictionary (Unabridged). One of the smartest moves I ever made was to buy
this dictionary when my daughter was a state spelling bee competitor; we
found that many of the words in the list she was given to study were not in
our home dictionaries, and I got tired of going to the library (even though
it's just a stone's throw away) to look them up. I later realized that I
could write off the $94.90 cost as a business expense because it would give
me further ammunition against publishers' editors, who generally use it as a
reference. I really do use it a lot for business and bless the day I bought
it.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
Michael Loughridge <michael_l...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Oo0r$XB5$GA.1884@cpmsftngp03...
Tonya Marshall
favorite.
http://www.onelook.com/
Michael Loughridge
it in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (printed version). Origin
obscure, but it apparently dates as far back as 1440. Nothing like
Technology to modernise things :>))
Michael
>
"Tonya Marshall" <to...@harborside.com> wrote in message
news:395F5A01...@harborside.com...
Bob Buckland ?:-)
The 'big dictionary' has always been out on display in our family too :)
My Dad, at 88 makes it a practice to still read at least two word definitions
a day that he hasn't used :)
The 'pilcrow' term is used in HTML as the name for the entity character :)
<!ENTITY para CDATA "¶" -- pilcrow (paragraph sign)
In the current Unicode standard the character was changed in title used from
'paragraph mark' to Pilcrow
http://www.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?ucode=00B6
The 'octothorpe' has stayed as 'number sign' in Unicode so far it seems.
http://www.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?ucode=0023
(of course in Word I guess it's "show/hide" if you use the toolbar icon tooltip as a 'definition'
<g>)
There is certainly no lack of definition and history of the Pilcrow on the net it
seems ("last word... <g> at
http://sul-server-2.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/1993/06/msg00195.html )
Some of the sources that tried to trace the pillcrow term back cite
"Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry
by Thomas Tusser " as the original source, written in the 1500s
http://www.hcs.ohio-state.edu/hort/history/046.html
but the best part of that was this on the Amazon site for the book (out of print <g>)
"Amazon.com Sales Rank: 576,978 "
Have you checked out the alt.usage.english newsgroup?
"a newsgroup where we discuss the English language (and also occasionally other languages). We
discuss how particular words, phrases, and syntactic forms are used; how they originated; and where
in the English-speaking world they're prevalent. (All this is called "description".) We also discuss
how we think they should be used ("prescription"). "
I haven't visited in quite awhile but assume it's still active.
But one of my favorites from their FAQ (400K+ from) is this one on the U.S. dollar sign:
http://www.nettec.org/a.u.e.-faq/faq.html#originofthedolla <g>
"Origin of the dollar sign (notes by Mark Brader)
It is sometimes said that the dollar sign's origin is a narrow
"U" superimposed over a wide "S", "U.S." being short for "United
States." This is wrong, and the correct explanation also tells why
the $ sign is used both for dollars and for pesos in various
countries. The explanation is not widely known, maybe because not
many people would think to look for it in a book called _A History
of Mathematical Notations, Volume II: Notations Mainly in Higher
Mathematics_ by Florian Cajori (published in 1929 and reprinted in
1952, by Open Court Press). Cajori acknowledges the "U.S." theory
and a number of others, but, after examining many 18th-century
manuscripts, finds that there is simply no evidence to support those
theories.
Spanish pesos were also called piastres, Spanish dollars, and
pieces of eight. (The piece of eight was so called because its
value was eight reales. Some countries made one-real coins by
slicing pieces of eight into eight sectors; the still-current U.S.
slang "two bits" for a quarter of a dollar may refer to this,
although "bit" denoting any small coin -- as in "threepenny bit" --
was already in use.) The coins were circulated in many parts of the
world, much as U.S. dollars are today. The coins were so well known
that, when the U.S. got around to issuing its own silver coinage
(U.S. dollar coins first appeared in 1794), it simply replicated the
Spanish unit's weight and hence value, and even one of its names; so
it was natural to use the same symbol.
Since three of the four names given above for the Spanish dollar
start with p (and pluralize with s), it was natural for
abbreviations like p and ps to be used. Sometimes ps was written
s
as P -- P with a superscript s. The superscript was a common way
of rendering abbreviated endings of words -- we see vestiges of it
today in the way some people write "10th". Now, what happens if you
write P with a superscript s fast, because it's part of a long
document that you have to hand-write because you can't wait for the
typewriter to be invented, let alone the word-processor? Naturally,
you join the letters. Well, now look at the top part of the
resulting symbol. There's the $ sign! Reduce the P to a single
stroke and you have the form of the $ with a double vertical; omit
it altogether and you get the single vertical.
And yes, both these forms are original. Cajori reproduces 14
$ signs from a diary written in 1776; 11 of them have the single
stroke, which was the more common form to the end of the century,
and 3 have the double stroke.
Although the $ sign originally referred to a Spanish coin, it was
the revolting British -> American colonists who made the transition
from ps to the new sign. (This is apparently also why we write $1
instead of 1$; it mimics the British use of the pound sign.) So,
while it did not originally refer to the U.S. dollar, the symbol
does legitimately claim its origins in that country. "
=======
<<"Suzanne S. Barnhill" <sbar...@zebra.net> wrote in message
news:uptMDUD5$GA.1576@cpmsftngp05...
Suzanne S. Barnhill
though!
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
Bob Buckland ?:-) <7521...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:eqBsXsF5$GA.286@cppssbbsa04...
ra...@my-deja.com
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" <sbar...@zebra.net> wrote:
> The traditional (albeit somewhat abstruse) name for the paragraph symbol is
> pasted outside Word. You can insert a paragraph symbol from Insert Symbol,
> and you can copy/paste it within Word (though not into the Find dialog), but
> if you try to copy and paste into another application, you'll find it fails.
> Whenever I need to stick one in an email, I have to get it from Character
> Map (I don't do ANSI codes because my numeric keypad is inaccessible). And
> of course if you copy and paste an actual paragraph mark (as opposed to the
> printed symbol), you are copying and pasting a paragraph.
>
> Suzanne S. Barnhill
> Microsoft Word MVP
> Words into Type
> Fairhope, AL USA
>
> news:eMt75.2511$4C4....@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> >
> > I have a question which has been puzzling me for a while now, do anybody
> > know what the technical names is for the Paragraph Characters in Word ?
> >
> > With thanks in advance
> >
> > Dougie.
> >
> >
>
Furthermore, the word 'abstruse' is one of the perfect exemples of
recursion, like rescursion itself.
In a dictionary one might find:
abstruse, see: abstruse
Meaning abstruse is a difficult word for difficult.
One of the others, of course, is recursion itself ;-)))
Richard
--
Foar de kofje net eamelje!
+---++---++-**-++---++---+
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Doug Robbins
Have you got a name for these { } - other than curly brackets?
Please post any follow-up or new questions to the Newsgroups so that others
may benefit therefrom or contribute thereto.
Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
Suzanne S. Barnhill <sbar...@zebra.net> wrote in message
> --
> Suzanne S. Barnhill
> Microsoft Word MVP
> Words into Type
> Fairhope, AL USA
>
> Michael Loughridge <michael_l...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:Oo0r$XB5$GA.1884@cpmsftngp03...
> >
> > "Suzanne S. Barnhill" <sbar...@zebra.net> wrote in message
> > news:eYUk2n64$GA.1440@cpmsftngp04...
> > > The traditional (albeit somewhat abstruse) name for the paragraph
symbol
> > is
> > > "pilcrow."
> >
> >
Suzanne S. Barnhill
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft Word MVP
Words into Type
Fairhope, AL USA
Doug Robbins <drob...@eisa.net.au> wrote in message
news:O7Ac2AN5$GA.1236@cpmsftngp04...
Kevin Weaver
BRACES. A reference to that could be:
Scott Foresmans Writers Guide where they're (also) called BRACES
Doug Robbins
Please post any follow-up or new questions to the Newsgroups so that others
may benefit therefrom or contribute thereto.
Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
Suzanne S. Barnhill <sbar...@zebra.net> wrote in message
news:u0wnmDQ5$GA.197@cppssbbsa05...
> Answered duplicate email.
>
> --
> Suzanne S. Barnhill
> Microsoft Word MVP
> Words into Type
> Fairhope, AL USA
>
> Doug Robbins <drob...@eisa.net.au> wrote in message
> news:O7Ac2AN5$GA.1236@cpmsftngp04...
ra...@my-deja.com
Kevin Weaver <ke...@modelfitness.com> wrote:
> The only thing I've ever heard them called (other than curly brackets) was
> BRACES. A reference to that could be:
> Scott Foresmans Writers Guide where they're (also) called BRACES
>
> Doug Robbins wrote:
>
More information can be found on the following web site:
http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/latin1/3.html
Here, also, they are called 'curly brackets'. In Dutch we call these
characters 'accolades', but the English does not seem to have adopted
this word for the curly brackets, only for the small tap on the shoulder
with a sword to promote someone to knighthood.
Richard (NL)