Rabatment of the rectangle

[1] One argument is that squares are such a simple, primal geometric shape that the brain automatically looks for them, mentally completing this rabatment whether it is made explicit or not.

There is no hard and fast rule regarding such positioning; a composition can have a sense of dynamic unrest or a sense of equilibrium relative to important lines such as ones taken from rabatment or from the rule of thirds, or from nodal points such as the "eyes of a rectangle"—the four intersections derived from the rule of thirds.

[5] Primary image elements can be positioned within one of the two rabatment squares to define the center of interest, and secondary image elements can be placed outside of a rabatment square.

[1] If the long sides of the rectangle are exactly twice the length of the short, this line is right in the middle.

In Western cultures that read left to right, attention is often focused inside the left-hand rabatment, or on the line it forms at the right-hand side of the image.