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Reader question: When Taylor Swift says she “may take a career break”, what does it mean? Will she stop singing? My comments: In other words, Taylor Swift, the pop star, will take some time off of work as a singer and entertainer. Yes, for some time, she will stop singing if she takes such a break. As a matter of fact, she has to stop singing and giving concerts altogether. Otherwise, you cannot consider it a “break”. A break, you see, is a temporary stop or halt to an activity. It is a discontinuity. At the work place, for example, some employers offer a coffee break, a little break from work for staff to drink a cup of coffee and catch a breather. Most work places offer a lunch break at noon, of about an hour or two (or even three if you happen to work for some generous government bureaucracy or other in some places). In the theater, we have a break of about a quarter of an hour at what is called an intermission, which breaks the program into two halves and which allows audiences to, for example, yawn, stretch their arms and legs and go to the loo. Or when we watch a show on TV, they have commercial breaks to allow advertisers to air their advertisements – called commercials. All of these breaks share one thing in common. They bring the main activity to a complete halt. Oh, another thing is that after the break, the said activity, be it work at the work place or a soap opera on TV, resumes and carries on as before. | 
