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Line (poetry)
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A line in poetry is a unit of language into which a poem is divided which operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures such as the sentence or clauses in sentences. Although the word for a single poetic line is verse, this term now tends to be used to signify poetic form more generally. A numbered group of "verse lines" is normally called a stanza.
The rules that determine what makes a line are different for different languages according to the various constraints, aural characteristics or scripting conventions of the given language.
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A line in poetry is a unit of language into which a poem is divided which operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures such as the sentence or clauses in sentences. Although the word for a single poetic line is verse, this term now tends to be used to signify poetic form more generally. A numbered group of "verse lines" is normally called a stanza.
The rules that determine what makes a line are different for different languages according to the various constraints, aural characteristics or scripting conventions of the given language. On the whole, lines are generally determined by their rhythm, or repeating aural patterns in recitation. Other ways to determine lines can be by syllable-count. Different forms of line can usually be distinguished and categorised according to their different rhythmical or syllabic patterns and lengths.
As a general rule, most poetry is composed of lines which use the same formal repeating pattern. Other formally patterning elements may indicate how the lines occur in verse, such as end-rhyme. One convention that can be used when conveying lines in printed settings is the employment of capital letters to visually indicate the beginnings of lines regardless of other punctuation in the sentence, but it is not necessary to adhere to this.
In the speaking of verse, a line ending may be pronounced and involve a pause of some kind, so that it is end-stopped, or it may be elided, such that the utterance can flow seamlessly over the line break in what can be called run-on.
In more "free" forms, such as free verse or concrete poetry, lines are (arguably) more arbitrary and more visually determined such that they may only be properly apparent in typographical presentation, page layout, etc. At the other extreme, the so-called prose poem eschews the poetic line altogether.
In quotations of verse, line breaks can be indicated by the forward slash (/). For example: ...What in me is dark,/ Illumine! what is low, raise and support! (Milton, Paradise Lost). A stanza break can be indicated by the forward slash doubled (//).
The most famous and widely used line of verse in English prosody is the iambic pentameter while one of the most commonly used lines in surviving classical Latin and Greek prosody was hexameter. Classical Sanskrit poetry, such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, was most famously composed using the sloka.
Sometimes the cultural conventions for ordering lines in one language do not readily translate into another. For example, it is not clear that line-forms in English which claim to emulate examples of the Chinese or Japanese line in forms such as haiku or renga by syllable count can really be said to be meaningful counterparts due to the profoundly different structures of the languages in question.
For various examples of poetic line and the rules which determine their construction, see Metre (poetry)
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