caesura

In meter, a caesura ( or (( ); alternative spellings are cæsura and cesura) is a complete pause in a line of poetry and/or in a musical composition. This can also be referred as a quarter rest with a fermata over it. The plural form of caesura is caesurae. In poetry, a masculine caesura follows a stressed syllable while a feminine caesura follows an unstressed syllable. A caesura is also described by its position in a line of poetry. A caesura close to the beginning of a line is called an initial caesura, one in the middle of a line is medial, and one near the end of a line is terminal. Initial and terminal caesurae are rare in formal, Romance, and Neoclassical verse, which prefer medial caesurae. In scansion, poetry written with signs to indicate the length and stress of syllables, the "double pipe" sign ("||") is used to denote the position of a caesura.