Cyclic orders are closely related to the more familiar linear orders, which arrange objects in a line. Any linear order can be bent into a circle, and any cyclic order can be cut at a point, resulting in a line. These operations, along with the related constructions of intervals and covering maps, mean that questions about cyclic orders can often be transformed into questions about linear orders. Cycles have more symmetries than linear orders, and they often naturally occur as residues of linear structures, as in the finite cyclic groups or the real projective line.