# Lines > Lines are a written imposition: one short sentence copied out by hand a set number of times by a deadline, as a consequence in an adult discipline arrangement. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/lines/ - Section: A–Z - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. The most familiar imposition there is, and the one people underestimate until they have actually sat down and done four hundred of them. It is not the writing that gets you. It is the tenth minute. --- ## In short - One short sentence, handwritten, a set number of times, due by an agreed deadline. - A hundred lines is twenty to thirty minutes. Five hundred is an evening. A thousand usually does not get finished. - Handwritten rather than typed. Typing is fast and mechanical and skips the tedium the whole thing is made of. - Lines are one kind of [imposition](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/imposition/), not a synonym for it. This is about consenting adults over eighteen who have chosen an arrangement with each other, and who could walk away from it on a Wednesday. ## What it means A line is a sentence written out by hand, repeated a fixed number of times, to a deadline. "I will text Sam when I get home." A hundred of them, by Thursday, photographed and sent. Lines sit inside the broader category of [impositions](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/imposition/), which covers everything non-corporal, from corner time and essays to withdrawn privileges. Lines are the best known of those and the easiest to set, which is why people reach for them first. ## In practice The numbers matter more than anyone expects. Setting an unrealistic figure is the commonest way an arrangement quietly stops being enforced, because a thousand lines is not a punishment, it is a project, and projects get abandoned. I use a hundred as the ordinary unit and five hundred for something that genuinely warrants an evening. Handwritten. This is not fussiness. Typed lines can be pasted, and even when they are not, typing is quick and rhythmic and misses the specific dullness the punishment is constructed from. Pen, paper, legible. If the handwriting has collapsed into a scrawl by line eighty, that is visible on the page and can be dealt with. Keep the sentence short and tied to the actual breach. Fifteen words at a hundred repetitions is not a hundred lines, it is three hundred, and the person doing them will work that out somewhere around line thirty. Then the photograph. Finished page, sent, by the deadline. The deadline matters as much as the number, because "sometime this week" reliably means Sunday night and a rushed page. ## The common misreading Most people think the punishing part is the hand ache. It is not, or not mainly. It is that lines require you to keep choosing, every few minutes, for an hour, to carry on doing something you do not want to do. A spanking only asks you to stay still while something happens. That difference is the entire argument for lines, and it is why they often land harder than anything corporal. The other mistake is setting them and never looking. An imposition that is never checked teaches both of you that the rules here are ornamental. If you are not going to read the photograph, do not ask for the lines. > **A small practical thing.** Numbering the lines down the margin makes the count checkable and makes the remaining distance visible to the person writing, which is part of the effect. It also stops the argument about whether it was ninety or a hundred. ## Read next - [Lines, corner time and impositions](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/lines-and-impositions/) - [Imposition](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/imposition/) - [Punishment](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/punishment/) - [Rules and agreements](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/rules-and-agreements/) ## Common questions ### How many lines should an adult be given? A hundred handwritten lines takes most adults twenty to thirty minutes and is enough to be felt on a weeknight. Two hundred takes about an hour. Five hundred is a whole evening, more than most people can write well. Above that, lines tend to be abandoned or fudged, which is worse than setting nothing. ### What should the sentence say? Something short and specific to the rule that was broken, such as a line about texting when you get home. General statements of contrition work less well, because the repetition is meant to lodge one concrete thing rather than produce a mood. Keep it under about eight words, since a long sentence triples the time without tripling the effect.