Typography and printing

Two verbs are spelt umbrechen, and the print shop uses the one that stays in one piece. In its everyday sense — to knock something over, or to plough up a field — it is separable and stressed on the prefix: Der Sturm bricht den Zaun um, and the participle is umgebrochen. In typesetting it means to lay running text out into lines and pages. The stress moves to the stem, the prefix no longer comes off, and the participle loses its ge: Die Setzerin umbricht das Kapitel neu, der Text ist umbrochen. A proof note that says umgebrochen has, strictly speaking, knocked the chapter over rather than laid it out. The noun der Umbruch belongs to the trade as well, where it names the made-up pages, although most Germans know it as an upheaval — a political one, or a turning point in someone’s life.