Paragraph and section glyphs
Someone please talk to me about the height of the paragraph ¶ and section § glyphs .
Are they cap height tall or descender tall?
Should they be the same height as each other (disregarding any overshoot)?
Should they both descend below the baseline or is that a bit old school?
Does anyone have any thoughts or can I basically do what I want?
Thanks,
Nick.
30.Sep.2008 4.19am
I also meant to ask, are they upper case or lower case style characters?
Forgive my ignorance if they don’t belong in either.
30.Sep.2008 6.22am
In my experience, paragraph and section marks occur most commonly in conjunction with figures (in legal and scholarly references). As such, I design them to correspond to figure proportions and alignments.
The other common use for the paragraph mark is as a paragraph signifier in the middle of a solid block of text (or sometimes decoratively at the beginning). As such, it is usually followed by a capital letter. I generally design the paragraph mark to top align with cap height. But the bottom may descend.
You might look at these marks in other fonts that you admire to see how those who have come before have handled them.
— K.