Section sign (§) in HTML
The section sign marks a numbered section in a legal or technical document. Its named reference is § and its code point is U+00A7.
At a glance
- Character
- §
- Named entity
- §
- Decimal reference
- §
- Hex reference
- §
- Unicode code point
- U+00A7
- Unicode name
- SECTION SIGN
- In the entity reference
- Punctuation
In detail
The sign is a reference mark, not a word. It stands in for the word section in a citation, so a sentence that reads see section followed by the symbol and a number says section twice. In running prose the convention is to spell the word out at the start of a sentence and use the symbol inside a parenthetical citation or a table.
Doubling it pluralises it. One symbol introduces a single section, two symbols introduce a range or a list of them, which is a convention borrowed from legal citation and used consistently in German statute references as well as in common law jurisdictions.
The symbol and its number are a unit and should never be split across a line. A non-breaking space between them is the fix, and it is one of the few places where the non-breaking space is unambiguously correct rather than a habit. A section symbol stranded at the end of a line looks like a typographic ornament.
It has picked up an unrelated life in software documentation as a heading anchor marker, alongside the pilcrow and the link glyph. That use is decorative, so it wants aria-hidden and a real accessible label on the link, otherwise every heading on the page announces a section sign before its text.
Examples
<p>See § 12(b) of the agreement.</p>
<p>Compare §§ 3 to 7.</p><h2 id="scope">
Scope
<a href="#scope" aria-label="Link to this section">
<span aria-hidden="true">§</span>
</a>
</h2>Things that catch people out
- Writing the word section and then the symbol duplicates the meaning. Pick one.
- Without a non-breaking space the symbol wraps away from its number on narrow screens, which reads as an error even though the markup is fine.
- It is not the same as the pilcrow. The section sign introduces a numbered division, the pilcrow marks a paragraph, and legal citation treats them as different references.
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