The story of paragraph

Paragraph is a well-known typographic technique, which is taught at the very first lessons in elementary school.

Put hand to the notebook and indent a distance of about two fingers, thereby indicating the beginning of a new paragraph, a new thought author's thought. What could be simpler? In fact, this element has an extensive and interesting history.

Long ago, before the invention of printing by the famous Gutenberg, there already existed a way to designate in the text, where one thought of the author ends and another begins. This method had nothing to do with the way paragraphs are now used in books. No indentation at the beginning of the line existed, just as there was no transfer to a new line at all. The text was a solid wall, and the gap was shown by a special symbol, which, perhaps, was seen by all who ever used Microsoft Word.

¶

Line transfer, carriage return, paragraph sign, alinea — the weird Pilcrow sign (Unicode 0x00B6) is now called in every way, and it's hardly anyone can guess that this is not an invention of Microsoft Word, but a sign with almost a thousand-year history. The shape of the sign originates from the letter C, the first letter of the Latin word “Capitulum”, which means “Chapter”. As far as Author knows, the sign was finally formed in 1400–1450, and has been transformed as follows:

The modern sign of paragraph § is a modified version of this original sign, which used to be placed inside the line and highlighted with color, indicating the beginning of a new semantic group of sentences. Before the invention of printing, the sign was written into books manually, by a particular person called “Rubricator”. Book of King of Alfonso X, 13th century:

At the end of the Middle Ages, paragraphs began to be written from a new line, but the way to put the sign disappeared later. It was still traditionally put at the beginning of the line. Opera Vergiliana & Anais Vergiliiana, 1517:

Paragraph sign was placed at the beginning of the line and was highlighted, as a rule, in red. Hence the roots of at least two concepts grow: a “red line” and a “rubrica”. The word “rubrica” comes from the Latin word rubrum, which means “red”. Here, too, lies the origin of the name of the profession of the rubricator, that is, a person marking the rubrics in the text. And the “red line” is an another name for paragraph indentation.

Where did this sign disappear, why now it is not found in the texts? Well, this is a wonderful example of a hole from a donut. The sign disappeared, and the place for it remains. Rubricator's work was carried out after the main text of the book was written, and the book compositor used to leave a special place for the later inscription of this sign. However, for some reason, the sign was not always put in books, and in finally only indentation left at the beginning of new lines.

In fact, not putting this sign, lazy medieval booksellers gave the world the best and most obvious way of marking paragraphs: a small indent on the new line. Since then, this method is used everywhere, and the “holes” in the beginning of the chapters seem to wait for an hour when they are finally filled with the hand of the rubricator.