Home › Glossary › Letter U

uneven 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 expected syntactic flow, creating surprise, emphasis, or ambiguity through irregular continuation.

Detailed Definition
An uneven line-break occurs when enjambment splits a phrase or clause at an unexpected or syntactically awkward point, creating rhythmic surprise or semantic ambiguity; such breaks challenge reader expectations and can heighten emotional intensity or cognitive dissonance within the poem.
Example
Example in poetry:
A line broken after a preposition: “She gave the book / to no one”; Breaking mid-verb: “He stum- / bled in the dark”; A line ending with “and” followed by the next line starting with the object; “The sky turned / red with warning” splitting subject and predicate unnaturally
Additional Notes
Uneven line-break: A line break that occurs at a point that is rhetorically awkward, grammatically disjointed, or rhythmically surprising, often to deliberately interrupt the reader's expectation or draw attention to the phrase split across lines; a form of disruptive enjambment.
Also Known As
Irregular line-break Uneven division Broken enjambment Asymmetrical enjambment
Skip to main content