Section sign (§)

How to read it

Unicode encodes it as U+00A7 SECTION SIGN and notes that it is “used in referencing numbered sections or paragraphs”. Butterick’s Practical Typography says it is used when citing documents with numbered or lettered sections, that it is doubled for a reference to more than one, and that a sentence beginning with such a reference spells the word out instead, as in “Section 17200 applied to the transaction, but § 17500 did not”. US Code citations use it, as in 15 U.S. Code § 1111.

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Spacing and footnotes

The US Government Publishing Office’s Style Manual sets a thin space between the sign and the number (§ 12), and Butterick puts a non-breaking space there so the two can’t be split across lines. The section sign is also the fourth of the traditional footnote marks, after the Asterisk (*), the Dagger (†) and the double dagger, in the GPO manual and in the American Heritage Dictionary.

In German law

German statutes number their provisions with it. The first section of the German Civil Code is published by the Federal Ministry of Justice as “§ 1 Beginn der Rechtsfähigkeit” (beginning of legal capacity).

Look-alikes

The Pilcrow (¶) ¶ is the paragraph mark, but Unicode notes that in some European usage the pilcrow is used as the section sign. Unicode’s top half section sign ⸹ (U+2E39) is a phonetic mark showing pronunciation on one side of the mouth only.