In an examination of two alternative hypotheses about the role played by pauses in the planning of writing, this paper focuses on the long, "pregnant" pause. The first section of the paper examines the two alternative hypotheses about planning, one based on the theoretical perspective of linguistics and the other on the assumptions of rhetoric. The second section presents a new body of research on episodic patterns, termed "composing episodes," within the writing process itself. It contends that when these episodes are observed through protocol analysis, they appear to be the major planning units in which writers work. The paper argues that neither paragraph boundaries nor sentence level shifts in idea development are good predictors of episode boundaries but that goal-related planning is. It concludes that these findings might be used in locating possible ways in which linguistics and rhetorical planning might interact. (FL)