Editing Slash (punctuation) (section)

===Line breaks===
The slash (as a "virgule") offset by spaces to either side is used to mark [[Line (poetry)|line breaks]] when transcribing text from a multi-line format into a single-line one.<ref name="solidhart" /><ref>{{cite book |title=[[The Chicago Manual of Style]] |edition=16th |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |date=2016 |at=13.27}}</ref> It is particularly common in quoting [[poetry]], [[lyrics|song lyrics]], and [[drama]]tic scripts, formats where omitting the line breaks risks losing meaningful context. For example, here is a part of [[Hamlet]]'s [[soliloquy]]:

{{poemquote|
[[To be, or not to be]], that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them...|''[[Hamlet]]'', Act II, Scene ii<ref>{{cite book |last=Shakespeare |first=William |author-link=William Shakespeare |author-mask=Shakespeare |title=[[Hamlet]] |at=Act III, Scene II}}</ref>}}{{full citation needed|date=September 2023|reason=Cite a specific edition and page number.}}

If someone wanted to quote the above [[soliloquy]] in a prose paragraph, it is standard to mark the line breaks as follows: "To be, or not to be, that is the {{nowrap|question: /}} Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to {{nowrap|suffer /}} The slings and arrows of outrageous {{nowrap|[[Fortune (goddess)|Fortune]], /}} Or to take arms against a sea of {{nowrap|troubles, /}} And by opposing end them..." Less often, virgules are used in marking [[paragraph]] breaks when quoting a [[prose]] passage. Some style guides, such as ''[[New Hart's Rules|New Hart's]]'', prefer to use a pipe {{char|{{!}}}} in place of the slash to mark these line and paragraph breaks.<ref name="solidhart" />

The virgule may be thinner than a standard slash when typeset. In computing contexts, it may be necessary to use a [[non-breaking space]] before the virgule to prevent it from being [[widows and orphans|widowed]] on the next line.