Optical absorption and photo-luminescence measurements were performed on a series of semiconducting polymers, based upon phenylene linkages, that have discrete emitter units. In these polymers, broken conjugation has been achieved in two ways : by introducing meta-linkages between various numbers of para-connected aromatic groups or by severe steric distortion of a fully conjugated main chain. In either case, electronic states are localized on relatively small units, resulting in a large (pi, pi*) band gap. The band gap decreases with increasing emitter unit conjugation, as expected. Blue light emission was observed from these materials, with the peak emission wavelength red shifted (by greater than 1 eV on average) from the peak absorption.