The secondary prompt (PS2) is used to prompt the user with whatever string they want to indicate a command continuation line. For example, if I use the standard PS2 prompt and type in the command:
cat abc def \
The shell will prompt me for the rest of the line with a ? mark or some other character. I usually set my secondary prompt for something more interesting, such as:
PS2='more ? '
So that I know that the shell wants more information before executing the command line.