"After the break" or "after the jump" in online articles. Bwuh?

General Questions
#1

I keep stumbling across articles online about this, that, or the other that have a paragraph of opening text or an image, then the words ‘see more pictures after the jump’ or ‘the answer is after the break’. Thing is, there’s about a quarter inch of white space and then the article continues with the promised content. I’m not aware of any ‘jump’ or ‘break’ - at least not one significant enough to warrant mentioning.

I even turned off adblock to see if it might be referring to an advertising banner or some such, but nope.

What the heck does it mean?

#2

Here’s an example: it says “video after the jump”, then the video is right there.

http://www.everythingusb.com/diy_usb_gadgets_13159.html

#3

On blogs, “after the break” refers to text that appears after clicking a “read more” type link from the main blog page, which may only show the opening paragraphs of each entry. If you click a link that goes directly to the full article page, then the phrase can seem quite incongruous.

#4

I wonder if this is a variation of the concept of “below the break” used for printed newspapers…the jump-out-atcha stuff is put on the part of the newspaper which will be visible when it is folded; less significant items, even if on the front page, are “below the break.”

I believe some of these concepts of textual and visual breaks have been ported over into the cascading style sheets world of web design as well. You will recall that browsers all display the designer’s content differently so their break may not be your break…

#5

Every time I’ve seen it it’s been caused by what friedo mentioned.

#6

That’s “above the fold” and “below the fold.”

The print-media concept of “after the jump” is similar but refers to the situation when the page 1 part of an article ends with something like “cont. on page 14A.” The part of the article on 14A is said to come “after the jump.”

#7

Thanks for the correction. You are absolutely right that this is the more common convention.

#8

If you look here, you can see what friedo’s talking about. Scroll down the page a bit and you’ll find the first part of the article you linked to, up to where it says “Video after the jump”. You get to the rest of it by clicking on “Permanent Link.”

#9

Misspelling, or miscoding.

13159.html says “(link) Video after the jump (link to 13159.html)”

13207.html says “Watch the video (link) after the jump (link to 13207.html)”.

news.html says “(Video after the jump (link to 13159.html)” and “Perm…Link (link also to 13159.html)”

Anyway, could it be a template for insertion of content and ads? There just aren’t any ads right now.

#10

That’s most likely it; I usually see this when there’s an ad, so that readers don’t think they’ve gotten to the end of the article.