: How to show that one long line of poetry is only one line If I'm writing the following clerihew resume where I'm constrained to 40 characters per line. +----------------------------------------+

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Max Williams has given the best workaround with that indentation suggestion. However, one other possibility is to rearrange the items in the list, thereby producing more couplets that fit into the 40-character-line limit:

+----------------------------------------+
|Peter Turner |
|code burner: |
|perl, python, PHP, |
|java, tex, bash, and c, |
|object pascal, actionscript, |
|yml and javascript, |
|c++, html, |
|object pascal, yml. |
|All of these are his niche – |
|did I forget to mention tsch? |
+----------------------------------------+

(Of course, it's no longer a clerihew, so I've broken convention there, but I still couldn't help but wonder if those might fit into some more conventional prosodic form.)

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Two forms for long-line poetry line 'turnovers' (sometimes 'dog-leg turnovers'), or 'runovers', are conventional.

One is as indicated by a previous answer: left indentation or double-left indentation of the turnovers. The second of those, double-left indentation, is best used where single indentation is already used as a signifier in surrounding textual material. The double-left indented form for line turnovers is a familiar convention for academics, and so is supported by, for example, The Chicago Manual of Style (14th, 10.23), with reference to block (that is, not in-line) poetry quotations in academic works.

10.23 In a work containing quotations from poems with lines too long to be centered on the page, such as Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," all poetic quotations may be set with a uniform, short indentation—two or three picas from the left, for example—with any runover lines being further indented....

For verse typography and design, Chicago Manual also weighs in, but only to punt the question to the designer and author:

18.59 Works such as poems and verse plays differ from prose in that the length of a line is determined by the author, not...by the designer. The designer must try to reproduce the author's intention....

18.60 The size of type and the width of the type page should, wherever possible, accommodate the longest line...if more than a few lines must be run over, the shape of the poem may be lost.

18.61 .... Blank verse and poems characterized by a preponderance of long lines are generally not centered but are given a standard indentation. No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down here; each book must be considered with its own characteristics in mind.

The other form is a convention adopted by some authors, such as Auden. In this form, the 'turnover' line is aligned under the right end of the line so extended. A practical discussion of this convention is available at Little Star Journal, in an article titled "All Poets Bulletin: Help Us Make a Poetry Style Guide". The article quotes Edward Mendelson, "expert in both poetry and typography".

The ‘turnovers’ should be set on the right, indented so that the first word of the turnover is somewhat to the left of the end of the last word of the first part of the line.

This is a line that is going to be turned over
like this.

Of the two conventional forms, the best choice is yours, as the author and designer receiving the Chicago Manual punt. However, the 40-character constraint seems to me to favor double-left indentation, that is, twice the indentation of any paragraph or other significant indentation found in the surrounding text.

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This totally isn't a question about the English language, but you could indent the continued parts like so:

+----------------------------------------+
|Peter Turner |
|code burner |
|PHP, perl, python, object pascal, css, |
| javascript, html, sql, yml, java, |
| c++, c, tex, actionscript, bash |
| and tsch |
|are his niche |
+----------------------------------------+

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