Lines in a poem might be long and regular, short and regular or a poem might have a mixture of both long and short lines. How the poet chooses to structure the words in terms of line length helps shape the poem. Sometimes a continual use of short or long line lengths is purposeful, designed to match the theme of the poem. For instance, short lines can express speed or dislocation. The reader's eyes draw information from the overall visual effect of the line length.
Stanzas break up the poem on the page. If the poet writes in a block, without stanza breaks, it can make the poem appear dense. Four-line verses, or two-line couplets, favored by children's poets, give the poem a regular visual form that can be reassuring. The use of regular stanzas provides symmetry. Sometimes a poet chooses to write a block of lines, followed by a space and a single line or couplet for emphasis. This white space around the words also serves to contribute to the visual appearance of the poem.
Some poets use a combination of different fonts as part of the visual appearance of a poem. For instance, some lines might be bold or italicized, particularly if there is dialogue in the poem. Occasionally the poet will use capital letters as a visual effect or change the font size to accentuate something in the text. Punctuation devices, such as ellipsis, question marks and exclamation marks, can be effective visual devices to add interest to a poem.
Concrete poetry takes the visual element of poetry even further. In this type of poetry the arrangement of words on the page looks like the object described, such as a bird or a boat. The poet uses all visual devices available, such as typography, punctuation and white space to create a word picture.