Paragraph
A paragraph may refer to any of the following:
1. A paragraph is a section of text containing one or more sentences that express a single idea or unit of information. Modern typesetting usually delimits a paragraph with a visual separator or paragraph break. The separator may be a line break, vertical spacing such as a blank line, indentation of the first word, a horizontal line, or some combination.
Sometimes, a paragraph break may be represented by the paragraph symbol (¶), also known as a pilcrow (see below).
What key do you press to start a new paragraph?
To break text up into paragraphs, move the text cursor with the arrow keys to the location in the text where you want to start a new paragraph. Once in position, press Enter to start a new line or paragraph, depending on the program you're using. If a new line was created, press Enter again to start a new paragraph. These steps can be repeated for each new paragraph you want to create.
If you've moved text you don't want to move down, with the text cursor at the beginning of that text, press backspace to move the text up.
What can I do if I don't want to start a new paragraph?
In programs like Microsoft Word, pressing Enter may move to the next paragraph instead of the next line. In these programs, to go to the next line, press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter instead of only Enter.
How to select a paragraph
Select a paragraph by clicking and holding the mouse button at the start. Then, while continuing to hold, drag to the end. In most programs, you can also triple-click text in a paragraph to immediately select a paragraph.
Use Shift to highlight a paragraph by moving the text cursor to the beginning or end of a paragraph. After positioning the text cursor, press Shift, and click the opposite end of the paragraph. If done correctly, everything between the text cursor and where you clicked should be highlighted.
Practice manipulating paragraphs
Using the following textarea with paragraphs of text lets you practice creating new paragraphs, removing a paragraph, and selecting paragraphs.
2. A paragraph symbol or pilcrow is a formatting mark that helps represent the end of a paragraph. The graphic shown on this page is an example of a paragraph symbol. Formatting marks must be enabled to see this symbol in your document.
To create this mark in Windows, open the character map tool, locate the paragraph symbol, and then copy and paste it into your document.
3. With HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the <p> tag creates a paragraph in a web page.
Block of text, EOL, Formatting marks, HTML, Line break, Non-printing character, Orphan, Paragraph formatting, Word processor terms