How do I type the ¶ pilcrow sign symbol?

On Windows, type 00B6 and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 182 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00b6. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ¶?

Pilcrow Sign is U+00B6, written in HTML as ¶ and in LaTeX as \mathparagraph. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

What kind of character is ¶?

Pilcrow Sign is filed under Other punctuation in the Latin-1 Supplement block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.

U+00B6 · Other punctuation

HTML entity

LaTeX

\mathparagraph

Pilcrow Sign Symbol ¶

¶ is pilcrow sign, U+00B6 — \mathparagraph in LaTeX. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Other punctuation.

Also known as

paragraph sign

Unicode 1.0 called this character paragraph sign. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.

What Unicode says about ¶

section sign in some European usage

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+00B6`
HTML hex	`¶`
HTML decimal	`¶`
CSS	`\00B6`
JavaScript	`\u{00B6}`
Python	`\U000000B6`
Java / C#	`\u00B6`
Rust	`\u{00b6}`
Swift	`\u{00B6}`
PHP	`\u{00B6}`
URL encoded	`%C2%B6`
UTF-8 bytes	`C2 B6`
UTF-16 bytes	`00B6`
Base64	`wrY=`
Decimal	`182`
HTML entity	`¶`
LaTeX	`\mathparagraph`
Category	Other punctuation (Po)
Introduced	Unicode 1.1

Will ¶ survive being pasted?

Normalisation. Yes. ¶ is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
Legacy encodings. ¶ exists in Latin-1 and Windows-1252, so even software that predates Unicode can store it.
Size. 2 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.

Unicode cross-references

The standard points readers of ¶ at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.

Nearby in Latin-1 Supplement

The upper half of ISO 8859-1: the accented letters and the symbols that Western European printing needed but ASCII had no room for. This is where ° ± × ÷ £ ¥ © ® ½ ¼ live, which makes it the most-copied symbol block in Unicode despite being one of the oldest.

All 29 characters in Latin-1 Supplement →

How to type ¶

Windows	Type `00B6` then press `Alt`+`X`, or hold `Alt` and type `182` on the numeric keypad
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “pilcrow sign”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `00b6`, press `Enter`
HTML	`¶`

About Unicode’s Other punctuation category

Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.

Frequently asked questions

How do I type the ¶ pilcrow sign symbol?: On Windows, type 00B6 and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 182 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00b6. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ¶?: Pilcrow Sign is U+00B6, written in HTML as ¶ and in LaTeX as \mathparagraph. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is ¶?: Pilcrow Sign is filed under Other punctuation in the Latin-1 Supplement block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.