Talk:Caesura

Haiku
It would be useful to include a section on haiku, rather than just a reference link.

Confusing
The references to poetry work for me. On the other hand, the second sentence: "It is also used in musical notation as a complete cessation of musical time," is completely confusing. Does this mean a pause? Or does it mean the music stop indefinitely? Does it refer to the silence and -- if so -- how long is the silence?

-Typically in music a caesura implies that the music completely stops until the conductor directs the band to resume playing. As such the silence is as short or long as the conductor deems necessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.225.88.80 (talk) 20:01, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Confusing
There's no explanation for how the caesura serves the poetry itself.

Confusing
Particularly the first sentence of Section 1.1. Way too many parenthetical insertions have made it unintelligible. Elsewhere, it's never explained explicitly that '||' denotes a caesura, and it's unclear whether this symbol is part of the verse as the author wrote it, or has been added later to point out the caesura. Also see the comment above. -- Super Aardvark 23:39, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

not clear
I don´t understand if a C. comes when a syllable is omitted, which otherwise would have to be there, or if it is just a pause.

What do you mean by "which otherwise would have to be there"? Are you thinking of syncopation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.246.244 (talk) 12:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Musical Uses
What about the musical uses of the term? It is a widely used term in music, in addition to poetry. In the middle of a verse the composer might use caesura for effect.

Misses the point
Article does not say why a caesura may be used, article more a definition than a description Bourega 19:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

A caesura is anything, like a comma, semicolon, period, dash, etc., that creates an audible pause when the poem is read. It breaks up the line and can change the meter and stuff. It isn't necessarily at the end of lines, which is also why poetry isn't meant to be read with a pause at the end of a line, only at a caesura, which can be at the end of the line. I don't really have time to change it now but maybe later. I agree, this article is really vague about it.Dan Guan 00:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It's Poetic Form
to clear this up, we can simply put Caesura in the POETIC FORM category. i love caesuras! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.145.92.11 (talk) 15:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, it's MOST COMMONLY used in Poetic technique. It is marked thus, in poetry: "||". It is NOT used when writing poetry, it is used when applying scansion to lines.

Clean-up
I've tried to clean it up a bit, tell me if you think it's clearer now and the tag can be removed. --AVIosad(talk) 06:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Metah
What does "metah" mean? It is a link to meter, but the word "metah" is not used on that page at all. Wakablogger2 (talk) 19:41, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Tram lines
In my experience this is not called a pause, but is called a break. Where the music is not held up, like a regular pause, but is stopped and then restarted - if only momentarily. I think musically labelling it as such is incorrect. There should also be links to the other sorts of pauses within musical notation and the differences between them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.27.50.9 (talk) 10:04, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

please rewrite article
see the article we already have on middot as in &middot; and the introduction of spacing between words in written text; Greek poetry was recited from memory before it was written. See: lines, stanza, ode, enjambment, end-stop, line-break

We need an article adequate to couplets sung/recited - as the division we would tend to make between text and music for this topic is not historically valid.

G. Robert Shiplett 15:16, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

SEE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sentence_spacing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_divider interpunct middot Scriptio continua double dots (፡) Space_(punctuation) Whitespace_character Non-breaking_space Sentence_spacing_in_the_digital_age Hyphen G. Robert Shiplett 15:24, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Answers here!
Hi. My name is actually Cesura(Sez-er-a), a different version of Caesura. It basically means a pause in music or poetry. I am often asked why I was named after a pause in music. My dad jokes that he predicted I wouldn't shut up, but of course he says that to make me mad. :) But back to the point, it is a common term in music and poetry that means a pause. ~Cesura — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.10.4.167 (talk) 00:30, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You don't say. That is what the article is all about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.246.244 (talk) 12:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Intro needs rewriting
In its current state it is confusing as it starts by talking about its use in poetry then suddenly jumps to talking about music, unless there is some kind of conductor in poetry that I am unaware of. This is not only jarring, but also leaves it very ambiguous how much of the previous stuff also refers to its use in music and/or poetry from the perspective of a layperson (and this is not a highly technical article) Furthermore, references to its use in music should not refer to the decision being made by the conductor, or if they really must, they should specify that it could be made by someone else, as caesurae also occur in chamber music and other conductorless music. I would suggest saying "the performer(s)". Anditres (talk) 00:03, 10 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for highlighting that. The article is almost all about poetry.  So I've moved that jarring line into the music subsection.  Even there, it is poor for the reasons that you mention; perhaps it should simply be removed. Feline Hymnic (talk) 21:48, 8 February 2022 (UTC)