A caesura (plural: caesuras or caesurae; from Latin for "cutting") is a pause or break in a line of poetry where one phrase ends and another begins. It can be shown using a comma (,), a checkmark (✓), or two lines, which may be slanted (//) or vertical (||). The length of this pause can range from a very short silence to a longer, more noticeable stop.

Poetry

In classical Greek and Latin poetry, a caesura is the point where one word ends and the next word begins within a foot. A word juncture at the end of a foot is called a diaeresis. Some caesurae are expected and mark a break between two phrases or clauses. Other caesurae are only possible places for such breaks. A bridge is the opposite of an obligatory caesura, as word juncture is not allowed there.

In modern European poetry, a caesura is a natural end to a phrase, especially in the middle of a line. A masculine caesura comes after a stressed syllable, while a feminine caesura comes after an unstressed syllable. Caesurae are also described by their position in a line: an initial caesura is near the beginning, a medial caesura is in the middle, and a terminal caesura is near the end. Initial and terminal caesurae are rare in formal, Romance, and Neoclassical verse, which favor medial caesurae.

In verse scansion, the modern caesura mark is a double vertical bar ⟨ | | ⟩ or ⟨ ‖ ⟩, a variation of the single-bar virgula used in medieval manuscripts. This mark also became the virgule, a single slash used to show line breaks in poetry.

Caesurae were widely used in Greek poetry. For example, in the opening line of the Iliad:
"μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ, || Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος"
("Sing the rage, o goddess, || of Achilles, the son of Peleus.")
This line includes a masculine caesura after "θεὰ," a natural break dividing the line into two parts. Homeric lines often use feminine caesurae, a pattern also seen in Alexandrian poets. An example from the Odyssey:
"ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, || πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ"
("Tell me, Muse, of the man || of many wiles, who very much (wandered).")

Occasionally, a caesura appears in the fourth foot of a line.

Caesurae were also common in Latin poetry. For example, in the opening line of Virgil’s Aeneid:
"Arma virumque cano || Troiae qui primus ab oris"
("Of arms and the man, I sing. || Who first from the shores of Troy…")
This line uses a medial caesura. In dactylic hexameter, a caesura occurs when a word ends between the start and end of a metrical foot. In modern prosody, a caesura is only named when this also matches an audible pause.

The ancient elegiac couplet form of Greek and Roman poetry included a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of pentameter. The pentameter often showed a clearer caesura, as in Propertius’ line:
"Cynthia prima fuit; || Cynthia finis erit."
("Cynthia was the first; Cynthia will be the last.")

In Old English poetry, the caesura is a pronounced pause used to emphasize lines, making it more important than in Latin or Greek poetry. In Old English alliterative verse, the caesura is essential to the verse form. The opening line of Beowulf:
"Hwæt! We Gardena || in gear-dagum, þeodcyninga, || þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas || ellen fremedon."
("Behold! The Spear-Danes in days gone by, and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness, We have heard of these princes' heroic campaigns.")
This verse follows an accentual pattern with four stresses per line separated by a caesura. Old English poetry added alliteration to this structure.

In William Langland’s Piers Ploughman:
"I loked on my left half || as þe lady me taughte And was war of a woman || worþeli ycloþed."
("I looked on my left half / as the lady me taught / and was aware of a woman / worthily clothed.")

In Brahmic scripts like Devanagari, a punctuation mark called the danda is used to divide text into phrases, sentences, or verses. In Indian poetry, the danda marks caesurae in "dohas" (couplets) by Sant Kabir Das, a 15th-century poet. An example:
"कस्तूरी कुंडल बसे मृग ढूँढत बन माहि । ज्यों घट घट में राम हैं दुनिया देखत नाहि ।।"
("Musk lies in the musk deer's own nave. / But roam in the forest he does – it to seek.")

In Polish syllabic verse, such as the French alexandrine, lines longer than eight syllables are divided into two half-lines. Polish alexandrine (13 syllables) is usually split into 7+6. This pattern has been common in Polish poetry for five centuries. In Polish accentual-syllabic verse, caesurae are less important, but iambic tetrameter (9 syllables) is often divided into 5+4. Caesurae in syllabic verse are usually feminine, while in accentual-syllabic verse, they are often masculine: sSsSsSsS//sSsSsSsSs. Some metrical patterns include two or three caesurae, such as 18[9(5+4)+9(5+4)].

Caesurae can appear in later verse forms, where they are optional. For example, ballad meter (common in hymns) is often seen as a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of trimeter, but it can also be viewed as a line of heptameter with a fixed caesura at the fourth foot.

In some verse forms, multiple caesurae can exist. For example, in the ballad Tom o' Bedlam:
"From the hag and hungry goblin || that into rags would rend ye,
And the spirits that stand || by the naked man || in the Book of Moons, defend ye!"

In modern and freer verse, caesurae are optional but can be used for rhetorical effect, as in Alexander Pope’s line:
"To err is human; || to forgive, divine."

Music

In music, a caesura means a short, silent pause during which time is not counted. Like a silent fermata, caesurae are found between notes or measures (before or over bar lines) instead of on notes or rests (like a fermata). A fermata can be placed over a caesura to show a longer pause.

In musical notation, a caesura is shown with two diagonal lines, like two slashes ⟨ // ⟩. The symbol is often called "tram-lines" in the UK and "railroad tracks" or "train tracks" in the US. The symbol is represented in Unicode as U+1D113 𝄓 MUSICAL SYMBOL CAESURA.

The length of a caesura is decided by the musician.