Hear now the doctrine of the <j> tag!
Verse lines are finicky to typeset. Sometimes a line is just too long and you get something like this.
A brahmin’s so-called because they have banished
evil,
an ascetic’s so-called since they live a serene life.
Or, worse:
A brahmin’s so-called because they have banished ev-
il,
an ascetic’s so-called since they live a serene life.
Throw a <j> tag in:
A brahmin’s so-called <j>because they have banished evil,
an ascetic’s so-called <j>since they live a serene life.
And it’ll look like this:
A brahmin’s so-called
because they have banished evil,
an ascetic’s so-called
since they live a serene life.
The name <j> comes from the technical term “enjambment”, which is when a line of poetry flows on to the next. <j> is a custom HTML element that just does this one thing. The browser will automatically close it and apply styles.
It’ll make the verses lines look nice when appropriate on the web, but its main use is for printing. We convert it to the appropriate LaTeX and make your verses look nice!
- tl;dr: use a
<j>tag when you want to split a long line of verse in a sensible place.
Don’t!
- Don’t use
<j>outside of verse. - Don’t use multiple
<j>tags in a line. - Don’t go overboard, use only when necessary.
Long lines of verse are often a sign of clumsy translation. See if you can rephrase it first.
Obviously this will be more useful for some languages (German) and less for others (Japanese).