
Rebecca O. answered 07/26/19
Reading Tutor - Patience, Expertise, Flexibility
Line breaks can affect how a text is read, but it depends on the reader, the text, and the context of the reading. With fiction or even non-fiction, for example, paragraph breaks can be effective to make a point/action/dialogue/event stand out and stand on its own for emphasis.
Meanwhile, with poetry, line breaks often cause the reader to slightly pause (sometimes more or less than a period or comma, but usually always less than a stanza break) which can conceptually add variant meanings to the poem. Since line breaks contribute to a poem's rhythm, some poets write with line breaks, enjambment, indentation, and white space in mind to stylistically experiment with poetic forms.