Home › Glossary › Letter D

Disjunctive line break

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A line break that disrupts continuity, producing fragmentation and discontinuity

Detailed Definition
A disjunctive line break occurs when enjambment severs a phrase or clause in an unexpected or illogical place, creating cognitive or emotional dissonance; this technique disrupts reading fluency to emphasize ambiguity, tension, or multiplicity of meaning, common in experimental poetry that prioritizes destabilization over clarity.
Example
Example in poetry:
Disjunctive line break examples include lines broken at unexpected syntactic points causing momentary confusion; enjambment where semantic units split awkwardly; line breaks in modernist poetry that disrupt smooth reading.
Additional Notes
Disjunctive line break: A line break that severely or confusingly separates elements that are grammatically or logically connected, making the reader work to bridge the gap in a disruptive way. Related: Disruptive enjambment.
Also Known As
Interrupted line break fractured break ruptured verse disjunctive caesura Ashbery’s line
Skip to main content