What is the symbol § in the U.S. Code?

[Darryl_Lict]

I keep seeing the § symbol in discussions of the U.S. Code. I assume it means section or something like that. I’ve never seen it used in any other circumstances. Is it legalese?
[ol]
[li]What is it called?[/li]
[li]What does it mean?[/li]
[li]What is it’s history?[/li][/ol]

[Q.E.D]

It’s called the section sign. It’s used to denote, well, a section of the code.

[obfusciatrist]

So far as I know it is just called a section sign and §25 would be read “section 25.”

No idea on the history, a quick search doesn’t find anything that isn’t on the Wikipedia page, which isn’t much.

[Napier]

I am not sure but think it also appears in contexts using another symbol, the paragraph sign, which looks like a backwards uppercase P with the space filled and the upright doublestruck. The section sign is an “8 bit ASCII” 167 and the paragraph sign is a 182. I’m typing themwith the Alt key on a PC here -> º and here -> ╢and getting different characters, but I don’t know how to be certain how other Dopers will see them.

[Darryl_Lict]

Thanks, I guess my assumption that it meant section was correct. I found this wikipedia article on the pilcrow(¶).

Pilcrow might be a derivation of paragraph through parcrafte; the etymology is uncertain, yet, the Oxford English Dictionary says that ‘apparently’, pilcrow originated as an unattested version in English of the French pelagraphe, a corruption of “paragraph”; the earliest reference is c.1440. Another derivation suggested is pilcrow originating as a letter C, for capitulum, “chapter” in Latin. In this account, the pilcrow is the paraph symbol that replaced the paragraphos, which was marked with different symbols, including the section sign.

Now I’m going to start calling the paragraph symbol a pilcrow, since it comes up in everyday conversation all the time.

[wolf_meister]

§ ¶

Try ALT + 0167 = §

and ALT + 0182 = ¶

I think you were leaving out the leading zeroes.

ETA: that posting was directed to Napier. I didn’t know another posting would slide in between.

[Napier]

¶

Yes, that’s it. I forgot the leading zero!

[Mr.Moto]

I’ve always reproduced them in cites by cutting and pasting - which works like a charm.

[LawMonkey]

@Mr.Moto

I’ve always reproduced them in cites by cutting and pasting - which works like a charm.

I’ve gone one step better–I use Word’s Autocorrect feature to “correct” ‘9s9’ to the section sign. If I recall correctly, I have ‘&p’ set up for the pilcrow, but I only used that frequently when I was citing a lot of Ohio court decisions.

[AHunter3]

I use ¶ in FileMaker so often (used to indicate a literal hard return) that I touch-type it as easily as a &. Ampersand is shift-7 and ¶ is option-7 on a Mac.

[erislover]

For the US international keyboard, the pilcrow (awesome) is AltGr+; and the section symbol is AltGr+Shift+S. Now that I can type them I have found that I use them more.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

The section symbol is widely used in the same way in the fifty states, and probably elsewhere as well. IANAL, but a section generally correlates to what we think of as “a law” in colloquial terms, for instance California Penal Code § 187 against murder. Back when I had a job indexing insurance statutes, the section was the unit of indexing.

(It was a poorly paid, but interesting and at times entertaining job. Everyone there was either a JD or an MLS, and the level of office chitchat was far above anything I’ve heard elsewhere.)

[naita]

In Norwegian it’s called the “paragraph symbol”, cause sections of Norwegian law are called paragraphs.

[Quercus]

@naita

In Norwegian it’s called the “paragraph symbol”, cause sections of Norwegian law are called paragraphs.

Are these ‘sections’ in the U.S. sense (tens to hundreds of pages)? If so, is there a term for the smallest unit (one to five sentences)?

[Rand_Rover]

@Quercus

Are these ‘sections’ in the U.S. sense (tens to hundreds of pages)? If so, is there a term for the smallest unit (one to five sentences)?

Subsection or paragraph (i.e., Section 12(a) might refer to itself as “this paragaph (a)”). Parts smaller than that (i.e., that aren’t complete sentences) are clauses. I’m not sure if either of these are official designations, but that’s how I see them referred to.