14

I feel silly for asking something that seems like it should be so easy to look up, but as you might guess, searching for paragraph gets a lot results that have nothing to do with what I want to know.

I've been learning assembly these past few days (writing a tiny bootloader, that sort of practice stuff) and I've seen a few references to chunks of memory called a paragraph. I have a distant memory that a paragraph is two words, but I'm really not sure. What exactly is a paragraph and what is its significance?

Peter Cordes
  • 328,167
  • 45
  • 605
  • 847
cost
  • 4,420
  • 8
  • 48
  • 80

1 Answers1

19

A paragraph is 16 bytes. It's relevant primarily (if not exclusively) in x86 real mode, where it's the distance between two addresses you get when you increment/decrement a segment register by one.

Jerry Coffin
  • 476,176
  • 80
  • 629
  • 1,111
  • Hey thanks, but I can't figure out what your typo was supposed to be. "between two addresses you when you increment/decrement" are you referring to which addresses you can access? – cost May 17 '11 at 05:34
  • 5
    @cost The distance between 1000:1234 and 1001:1234 is one paragraph (16 bytes). – Igor Skochinsky May 17 '11 at 10:47