In books and documents, a section is a subdivision, especially of a chapter. [1] [2]
In fiction, sections often represent scenes, and accordingly the space separating them is sometimes also called a scene break. [3] Scene breaks represent gaps in story time that do not correspond to discourse time, and thus reveal the story-discourse distinction. [4]
In law, sections are divisions of legislation that may be deeply nested to as little as single sentences. [5]
Some documents, especially legal documents, may have numbered sections, such as Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or Internal Revenue Code section 183 . [5] The symbol § (section sign) prefixed to a number indicates that it is the number of a section detailed elsewhere. [6]
The dotted-decimal section-numbering scheme commonly used in scientific and technical documents is defined by International Standard ISO 2145. [7] [8]
The <section> tag may be used in semantic HTML to mark part of a webpage as a section. [9]
The <hr/> element originally represented a page-width horizontal rule, and now has the semantics of a "paragraph-level thematic break" which may be rendered in various ways. [10] In the Wikipedia markup language, it is represented as {{Hr}} and renders like this:
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| Page layout and typography |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Front and back covers | ||
| Endpapers | ||
| Front matter | ||
| Body matter | ||
| Back matter | ||
| Other elements |
| |