What is a line break? Here’s a quick and simple definition: Show
Some additional key details about line breaks:
Line Breaks in DepthEven more than the content of a poem, it is often the line breaks that make a text recognizable to people as poetry—that is to say, recognizable as being distinct from prose, which doesn't use line breaks in the same way. Because of that, the line could be considered the fundamental unit of poetry, and the line break the marker of these units. The sections that follow cover the basic characteristics and conventions that govern the way line breaks are used in poetry. Line LengthUp until quite recently—beginning in the 19th century—the only accepted way to break a line was according to a poem's meter. For that reason, it's helpful to have a strong grasp of what meter is in order to understand how it informed the use of line breaks. We provide more details about meter on its own page, but offer a quick primer here.
In formal verse (poetry with a strict meter and rhyme scheme) as well as in blank verse (unrhymed poetry with a strict meter), the poem's meter determines the length of each line by requiring that each line contain a particular number of syllables. So, a poem written in iambic pentameter (five iambs per line) will have a line break every ten syllables, as in the following example:
In free verse (poetry without any specific meter or rhyme scheme), line length is determined by the poet's desire to create a particular rhythm, or to place more emphasis on certain words by inserting more space around them. In free verse, unlike in formal or blank verse, line length may vary considerably throughout the poem, as in the following example:
CapitalizationUntil the 19th century, the first word of each line of poetry was capitalized as a rule, whether or not it was the beginning of a new sentence. Today, there is no standard for capitalization at the beginning of lines; some poets do it and some poets don't, though it's generally seen as a somewhat formal detail leftover from a bygone age of poetry. Here, for example, are the first lines of an early poem by John Ashbery that uses capitalization at the start of each new line, even though later in his life Ashbery, like many other modern poets, stopped observing this convention in his poetry.
PunctuationAlthough line breaks themselves tend to have the effect of creating a pause in the rhythm of a poem—and it is common for poets to use punctuation at the end of lines—line breaks don't necessarily have to coincide with the use of punctation. Lines that do end with some form of punctuation are called end-stopped lines, while lines that don't end with punctuation are called enjambed lines. For example, in these lines from Romeo and Juliet, the first, second, and fifth lines are end-stopped, while the third and fourth are enjambed:
Line Breaks and SyntaxSyntax is a term that refers to the structure and word order of a sentence. Generally speaking, poets place line breaks within their poetry so that they don't meaningfully disrupt the syntax of the sentence, but instead create pauses that mimic the natural pauses of speech. However, this not always the case; some poets use line breaks to intentionally create an unusual cadence or phrasing in their poems. Using line breaks in these two different ways produces a very different effect. For example, take the following two examples, which use the same words but employ line breaks in different places:
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The first example above uses line breaks in a way that follows the syntax of the sentence much more naturally than the second example, which is quite jarring. But some poets want to achieve that jarring effect, and use line breaks to purposefully alter the way in which someone would naturally read a given sentence. E.E. Cummings is a poet who even went so far in that direction as to break lines in the middle of words. Here's an excerpt from one of Cumming's poems that uses line breaks in aggressive opposition to natural syntax:
Line Breaks vs. Stanza BreaksWhile the majority of this entry focuses on line breaks, which separate one line of poetry from the next, line breaks are closely related to stanza breaks (also called "double line breaks"), which separate groupings of lines into stanzas. For example, the first two stanzas of Edward Thomas's "The Green Roads" have two line breaks and one stanza break:
A stanza break, as shown above, is usually distinguished from a line break through increased white space between the two lines. However, sometimes—particularly when poetry is excerpted inside a piece of prose—line breaks and stanza breaks can be indicated by a slash (/) and a double slash (//), respectively. In this notation, the first two stanzas of "The Green Roads" would look like this:
Poetry Without Line BreaksSome poets write in paragraph form rather than using line breaks. These types of poems are called prose poems because they take the appearance of prose writing. Here's an example of a prose poem by the contemporary poet Louise Glück:
How can you tell what is and isn't a poem without line breaks? The answer is that it's largely dependent on context. This prose poem was written by a well-known poet and published in a book surrounded by other poems. But even if it weren't, any self-contained piece of prose such as this—with a beginning and an end—could be considered a prose poem as long as the person who wrote it defined it that way. Nontraditional Line BreaksWhile all the line breaks shown so far have been clear movements from one line to another, some line breaks are more ambiguous or look different than those discussed above. IndentationLines of poetry are typically aligned to the left side of the page, but poets sometimes indent lines (move them away from the lefthand margin) in order to complicate traditional line breaks. Indentation does not mean that a line is not properly broken. Rather, the indentation, much like a line break itself, further informs the phrasing or rhythm of the poem. For example, a line that is indented more than others on the page might be read as having a slightly longer pause preceding it, or a delayed beginning, as though the poet is catching his or her breath. In the following example from a poem by Jorie Graham, the use of indentation is inconsistent and even falls in the middle of a line sometimes, creating a halting rhythm in the poem. Regardless of the irregularity of indentation, though, every new line in this poem has its own line break.
Dropped LinesA "dropped line" is the term for a single line of poetry that is split into two separate lines using a specific style of indentation, such that the first line is aligned to the left side of the page but the second line is indented so that it begins just beneath the point on the page where the first line ended. The following example is an excerpt from a poem by Charles Wright, who used dropped lines often:
Dropped lines can be used for a variety of reasons. They can add space in the middle of a line that is at once more than and less than the space added by a typical line break, and they also add dimension to the poem visually. Run-on LinesIf a poet writes a line of poetry that ends up being too long to fit on the page without interruption when the book goes to print, that line is generally broken into two lines, where the second line is indented to indicate that it is meant to be a continuation of the previous line. The following example is an excerpt from a poem by CK Williams, who was famous for his use of run-on lines.
These run-on lines—though they appear to be new, indented lines—actually do not follow line breaks. The indentation, in this case, marks that the indented line is part of the previous line, and should not be considered on its own. Line Break ExamplesExample of Line Breaks in Shakespeare's MacbethAs with nearly all of Shakespeare's works, Macbeth was written in iambic pentameter. This means that the line breaks occur (more or less) every ten syllables.
Example of Line Breaks in Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and HamThe lines in this book by Dr. Seuss use iambic tetrameter, so that each line contains eight syllables.
Example of Line Breaks in Robert Creeley's "The End"This short poem consists of three couplets and uses line breaks in a mix of traditional and nontraditional ways. The excerpt shown here is the first three lines of the poem. The first line break fits intuitively with the syntax of the sentence, acting as a pause where a comma might otherwise be. The second line break, however, occurs at a point that is markedly at odds with where the syntax would dictate a pause. The result of this enjambment is that the words "The grey" hang strangely at the end of the line without their meaning being resolved in any way.
Example of Line Breaks in Charles Olson's "I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You"Olson was an innovative poet who used line breaks in a nontraditional way. In this excerpt from his poem "I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You," the capitalization at the beginning of lines and sentences is inconsistent, indentation is used in idiosyncratic ways, and line breaks don't always occur in places where the syntax would make a pause seem natural.
Why Do Writers Use Line Breaks?Writers use line breaks because it's part of what makes a poem a poem. By inserting more white space into the text, poets are able to exercise a greater degree of control over the speed and rhythm at which their poetry is read, thereby distinguishing it from both everyday language and prose literature. So in many ways, the question of "why writers use line breaks" is no different from the question of why people write poetry at all. But that leaves the question of how poets use line breaks to achieve different effects, and the answer to that question can sometimes seem to have as many answers as there are poets writing today. Most commonly, though, writers use line breaks to determine a poem's speed and rhythm. For example, a poet may choose to use shorter lines and more line breaks in order to slow readers down and ask them to pay extra careful attention to each individual word that is being used. On the other hand, a poet may use long lines if the style of the poem is more conversational or if the sentences contain complex ideas with many clauses, since longer lines are easier and faster to comprehend. Ultimately, line breaks can be used in any way the poet desires to alter how the text of a poem is delivered to the reader. Other Helpful Line Break Resources |