Section (typography)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Section break" redirects here. For the term's use in overhead lines, see
Overhead lines § Breaks
.
Open pages of the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, showing an ornate section break on the lower left page created from asterisks. It is used to signal a pause for the reader and a transition in the narrative.

In books and documents, a section is a subdivision, especially of a chapter.

Sections are visually separated from each other with a section break, typically consisting of extra space between the sections, and sometimes also by a section heading for the latter section. They are a concern in the process of typography and pagination, where it may be desirable to have a page break follow a section break for the sake of aesthetics or readability.

In

scenes
, and accordingly the space separating them is sometimes also called a scene break.

Section form and numbering

In written narrative such as fiction, sections are not usually numbered or named. Section breaks are used to signal various changes in a story, including changes in time, location,

point-of-view character, mood, tone, emotion, and pace. As a fiction-writing mode, the section break can be considered a transition
, similar to a chapter break.

Some documents, especially legal documents, may have numbered sections, such as

Section 51(xxvi) of the Australian Constitution
.

The dotted-

decimal section-numbering scheme commonly used in scientific and technical documents is defined by International Standard ISO 2145
.

A document may also be considered to be divided into sections by its headings and subheadings, which may be used for a table of contents. For example, the hierarchical sections used in Wikipedia can be compiled into a table of contents for an article. Many books, however, only have chapter headings in the table of contents.

While a chapter may be divided by section breaks, a group of chapters is conventionally called a "part", often identified with a Roman numeral, e.g. "Part II".

Reference material may be divided into sections. The

section headers of a Chinese dictionary
are one example.

Flourished section breaks

Space between paragraphs in a section break is sometimes accompanied by a

miscellaneous symbols. Fonts such as Webdings and Wingdings
include many such glyphs.

In HTML, horizontal rules can be generated using the <hr> tag, which generates a paragraph-level thematic break. For more ornate presentation, CSS can be used to replace the line with an image.

See also

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