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Topic : What is the "three-asterisk-break" section called? What is the name for a text subdivision that is shorter than a chapter, but longer than a paragraph? They are always untitled (unlike chapters, - selfpublishingguru.com

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What is the name for a text subdivision that is shorter than a chapter, but longer than a paragraph? They are always untitled (unlike chapters, which are at the very least called "Chapter 1", "2" etc), and denoted with either three asterisks, a longer blank space between paragraphs, or some other fancy marks.

(specifically, I'm not asking about name for the break itself, but for the section of text delimited by such breaks.)


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It's also a sort of ellipsis signifying a break in narrative time.


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In general, you would call this a section. For fiction, a scene (or maybe a sequence if the portion of text covers multiple scenes),


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In typesetting, this is sometimes called a 'dinkus' -- see here: www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/glossary.html#D


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A question was asked on English.SE about what the marks themselves are called.

The only answer there states that most marks that separate logical chunks of text, signaling a change in focus/time/characters (or whatever the main point of the writing is) are called 'section/scene separators'.

So I logically assume that bits of text they separate would be 'sections' or, more appropriately in fiction writing, 'scenes.'

As for my real-world experience, I've seen such marks (including a double paragraph break in more recent fiction publications) used to signal change in scenes (and therefore, time) with the connotation of 'this isn't as big a change as between chapters.'


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