Caesura
Quick answer: A caesura is a deliberate pause inside a line of verse, usually marked by punctuation. Learn how caesuras shape rhythm and how to place them well.
A caesura is a pause within a line of verse, usually created by punctuation or a strong grammatical break, and felt by the reader as a beat of silence mid-line. The word is Latin for 'cutting'. Unlike the pause at a line's end, a caesura interrupts the line from inside, and where a poet places it, early, middle or late, changes the line's entire gait.
Every metrical tradition leans on the device. Old English poetry was built around a heavy central caesura dividing each line into half-lines. French alexandrines require one after the sixth syllable. In English pentameter the caesura roams, and that mobility is precisely its power: a pause that can fall anywhere keeps blank verse sounding like a living voice rather than a machine.
How It Works
Scanning marks a caesura with a double vertical bar. In this invented pentameter, the pause falls in the middle: 'The house is sold. The garden keeps on growing.' The full stop after 'sold' cuts the line, and the second half answers the first. Metrists distinguish a masculine caesura, falling after a stressed syllable, from a feminine one, falling after an unstressed syllable; the masculine cut is cleaner, the feminine softer. Multiple caesuras can divide one line into three or more gestures, a favourite trick of dramatic verse.
Where You Will See It
Beowulf's verses hinge on the central pause of Old English metre. Racine's tragedies keep the alexandrine's fixed cut with ceremonial discipline. Shakespeare moves the caesura restlessly, especially in the late plays, so that speeches surge and check like thought itself. Milton's blank verse in Paradise Lost is a study in mid-line turns. Later, Hopkins and Eliot used strong internal pauses in freer lines, and contemporary free verse relies on the caesura constantly, since without metre the internal pause becomes a chief tool of rhythm.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Vary caesura placement from line to line; three consecutive lines pausing in the same spot will tick audibly. Use an early caesura to make the rest of the line feel long and searching, a late one to make the ending abrupt. A mid-line full stop after a short sentence is one of poetry's strongest effects, silence where the reader expected motion. Judges reading for rhythm and structure notice caesura control immediately, and it is one of the quietest ways an entry stands out in a stack, at Writory or anywhere.
What poets can take from this
- Move the pause around; a caesura in the same position three lines running becomes a metronome.
- Use a mid-line full stop for maximum dramatic weight, especially after a short sentence.
- Let early pauses open lines out and late pauses snap them shut.
- In free verse, treat caesuras as your substitute for metre when shaping rhythm.
- Read drafts aloud and mark every place you naturally pause; then decide which pauses to keep.
Try it yourself
Write a poem in blank verse about a phone call that delivers hard news, and let every important turn of feeling happen at a mid-line caesura rather than at a line break.
Questions
What is the difference between a caesura and an end-stop?
An end-stop is a pause at the end of a line, while a caesura is a pause inside the line. A single line can have both, and playing internal pauses against line endings is a core rhythmic skill.
Does a caesura need punctuation?
Usually a comma, dash substitute, colon or full stop marks it, but a strong grammatical break can create a caesura without punctuation. The test is whether a reader speaking naturally pauses there.
What are masculine and feminine caesuras?
A masculine caesura follows a stressed syllable and feels firm; a feminine caesura follows an unstressed syllable and feels gentler. Poets mix the two to control how hard each mid-line pause lands.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.