How do I get the \paragraph's enumerated, but not the \section's

Question

I need the \paragraph{xxx} command outputs "§ 1 xxx" but the \section{Abc} outputs just "Abc", no numbering. Any help? Thanks.

Answer 1

Normally \paragraph is defined using \@startsection which uses the counter secnumdepth to decide whether to number the unit. For example, in article.cls you can find

    \renewcommand\thesubparagraph {\theparagraph.\@arabic\c@subparagraph}

and

    \newcommand\paragraph{\@startsection{paragraph}{4}{\z@}%
                                {3.25ex \@plus1ex \@minus.2ex}%
                                {-1em}%
                                {\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}}

The first command numbers paragraphs as Section.Para, the second sets the formatting of the paragraphs.

You can patch these commands, for example

\documentclass{article}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}         % Now sections are not numbered
\renewcommand\theparagraph{\arabic{paragraph}} % delete the section num from \theparagraph
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\paragraph{%
   \refstepcounter{paragraph}%   Manually stepping paragraph counter without consulting secnumdepth
   \@startsection{paragraph}{4}{\z@}%
     {3.25ex \@plus1ex \@minus.2ex}%
     {-1em}%
     {\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries\S~\theparagraph\space}} % Formatting the paragraph
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\section{First section}
\paragraph{First paragraph} Second
\end{document}