On 02/28/2011 01:45 PM, Carlo Traverso wrote:
"Marcello" == Marcello Perathoner<marcello@perathoner.de> writes:
Marcello> On 02/28/2011 12:07 PM, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>> Really! Who is here illiterate here. What does the semantic >> definition of a paragraph have that a Chapter title does not ?
Marcello> RTFW:
Marcello> "A paragraph [...] is a self-contained unit of a Marcello> discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or Marcello> idea."
This seems to me perfectly coherent with most chapter titles.
CHAPTER I. Please explain to me which discourse, point or idea the above mentioned most common of all chapter titles deals with.
The distinctive character of a paragraph is IMHO the display, you can run two paragraphs together and obtain one paragraph, only with changes in whitespace. Hence a paragraph is a typographical unit, not necessarily a logical unit (even if good typography usually makes paragraph breaks coincide with logical units). The fact that usually the paragraph breaks are decided by the author does not contradict that it is a typographical concept.
You can run a whole book into one line just with changes of whitespace. Long before paragraphs where typographically represented as blocks of text marked by whitespace authors used the pilcrow sign to start a new train of thought. And before that the Greeks used a dash in the margin ('paragraphos') to signal a new paragraph. Thus the concept of paragraph is much older than typography. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org