Do you know why we indent paragraphs? Monks missing deadlines.

¶ Before we had that space at the beginning of each paragraph, we identified new ones with the pilcrow (¶).

¶ When medieval monks painstakingly inked a manuscript, the scribe would leave an empty space at the beginning of the paragraph for the “rubricator” to later draw the pilcrow and other decorative devices. The monks did things assembly-line style.

¶ Two things happened. The first: these pilcrows and other decorative devices became increasingly elaborate and time-consuming to add. The second: the printing press was invented.

¶ Even before Gutenberg’s machine, monks occasionally would run out of time. But the much faster process, and a continuation of this time-consuming practice, meant that as the sheer volume of printed documents grew, it became impossible to keep up. “The rubricated pilcrow became a ghost,” Keith Houston writes in Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation & Other Typographical Marks. “It’s brief reign as the de facto paragraph mark was over, usurped by the indented paragraph.”

¶ We indent paragraphs because of missed deadlines and unnecessary complexity. Isn’t that just the most human thing you’ve ever heard?