Mormon Mentality - Thoughts and Asides by Peculiar People

By danithew

Mar. 19th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

The sign Â¶ (or pilcrow) appears at the beginning of many verses in our King James Bible.

For example in Genesis Chapter 1 we see:

6 Â¶ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

I rarely think about the Â¶. I usually ignore the Â¶.

Over the years, once or twice, I’ve looked up what Â¶ is and then promptly forgotten why Â¶ is there.

Before and while writing this post I’ve done a few online searches but I’m not coming up with much. I understand it’s used in electronic documents to mark formatting – to show where paragraph breaks or returns occur – but that doesn’t seem to really explain why it appears in our scriptures. Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to enter those marks on our pages – so, I thought I’d open up the inquiry to the ‘Nacle. The basic questions I have are

Why is the pilcrow there (in our scriptures) and what does it signify?
What would we lose if it were taken out? /or/ (in other words) is it important?

1. KyleM

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 5:35pm

They’re supposed to signify then end of one thought stream and the begining of another. Somewhat a paragraph marker.

I don’t think we have them in the BoM.

2. KyleM

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 5:39pm

As to the second question, it wouldn’t matter to most people if they were removed as most people aren’t interested in the narative of scriptures.

I’ve been meaning to read the BoM in the origional formating to see if it changes anything. I suppose that would tell me it the pilcrow would have any signifigance should I use them properly.

3. Dan

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 5:42pm

Kyle,

I purchased a replica of the original edition of the Book of Mormon. It does read differently when you read it without the helpers. For me, it feels weightier and deeper, but this is just a first run through it. We’ll see on the return read how it feels.

4. KyleM

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 5:45pm

That’s kind of what I thought my impressions would be. I’ll definately give it a go.

Thanks.

5. Nitsav

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 5:59pm

In the OT, at least, those represent the traditional breaks in the Hebrew Bible. Those breaks pre-date chapter and verse divisions, which don’t always follow those breaks. The classic example is Genesis chapter 1, which should end in chapter 2:4. Chapter and verse divisions weren’t inserted into the text until the 13th century, by a Brit, Stephen Langton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapters_and_verses_of_the_Bible

So if you want to see how ancient Israelites/Jews saw the natural divisions, read with the paragraph markers, not the chapters and verses.

6. Edje

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 6:17pm

From the introduction to The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible:
“In all likelihood, the first edition of the King James Bible was hurried through the press before the translators had fully completed their work. One of the casualties of this hurry was the paragraphing. It emerged rough and incomplete: for instance, there are no paragraph breaks marked in the New Testament after Acts 20. Curiously, this unsatisfactory situation has remained unchanged in the received text.”

My quad (1993 printing of 1989 publication of 1979 copyright) bears this out.

7. Cornelius

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 7:01pm

Jonathan Hoefler, a typeface designer, blogged about the pilcrow just the other day:

http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=84

Jonathan Hoefler’s entry is short, but informative and enjoyably nerdy. Jonathan is very well respected in the typeface design world and Mormons should give him props for his custom typeface design for the (current) LDS Church logo that came about in the late 90′s. He was commissioned to design the typeface by a BYU graphic design professor who came up with the concept and placement of the words. All blame for the enormous treatment of “Jesus Christ” over the other words lies with the BYU graphic design professor, not Hoefler.

8. danithew

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 11:02pm

Wow – I was away for a bunch of hours and come back to some great comments. Thanks everyone for your responses.

9. Clair

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 @ 11:22pm

“there are no paragraph breaks marked in the New Testament after Acts 20.”

I have it on good authority from a friend of another faith that God must have intended it to be that way.

10. John Hamer

Thu, Mar 20, 2008 @ 10:29pm

Typographically, it’s pretty.

11. David H. Sundwall

Wed, Apr 2, 2008 @ 10:56am