What is a paragraph (when referring to memory)

Question

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?

Edmee

Answer 1

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.

Judah

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? – Edmee

@Edmee The distance between 1000:1234 and 1001:1234 is one paragraph (16 bytes). – Capsize