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The oldest classical Greek and Latin writing had little or no space between words and could be written in boustrophedon (Opens in a new window) (alternating directions). Over time, text direction (left to right) became standardized, and word dividers (Opens in a new window) and terminal punctuation (Opens in a new window) became common. The first way to divide sentences into groups was the original paragraphs (Opens in a new window), similar to an underscore (Opens in a new window) at the beginning of the new group.[2] (Opens in a new window) The Greek parágraphos evolved into the pilcrow (Opens in a new window) (¶), which in English manuscripts in the Middle Ages (Opens in a new window) can be seen inserted inline between sentences. The hedera leaf (Opens in a new window) (e.g. ☙) has also been used in the same way.

Indented paragraphs demonstrated in the US Constitution

In ancient manuscripts, another means to divide sentences into paragraphs was a line break (newline (Opens in a new window)) followed by an initial (Opens in a new window) at the beginning of the next paragraph. An initial is an oversized capital letter, sometimes outdented beyond the margin of the text. This style can be seen, for example, in the original Old English (Opens in a new window) manuscript of Beowulf (Opens in a new window). Outdenting is still used in English typography, though not commonly.[3] (Opens in a new window) Modern English typography usually indicates a new paragraph by indenting (Opens in a new window) the first line. This style can be seen in the (handwritten) United States Constitution (Opens in a new window) from 1787. For additional ornamentation, a hedera leaf or other symbol can be added to the inter-paragraph white space, or put in the indentation space.

A second common modern English style is to use no indenting, but add vertical white space to create "block paragraphs." On a typewriter, a double carriage return (Opens in a new window) produces a blank line for this purpose; professional typesetters (or word processing (Opens in a new window) software) may put in an arbitrary vertical space by adjusting leading (Opens in a new window). This style is very common in electronic formats, such as on the World Wide Web (Opens in a new window)and email (Opens in a new window). Wikipedia itself employs this format.[citation needed (Opens in a new window)]