The aim of this research is to investigate and analyse how narrative poems and sonnets, two types of traditional poetry, have been handled in books, in England, in terms of typographic presentation. It focuses on how far the earliest printed editions of a poem establish a pattern for its subsequent presentation, and how far other influences might determine the typographic form. The main focus of the analysis is segmentation, the visible division of the text into units which, to a greater or lesser extent, reflect its underlying structure. This division is seen through methods of segmentation in the opening and closing of the poem and, within the poem itself, through typographic features such as indentation, capitalization, line spaces and the placing of each poetic line on a new typographic line. These methods are related to the poetic whole, stanzas. rhyme scheme units, verse paragraphs and line.