How to count syllables in a poem
A syllable is a single beat of sound, built around one vowel sound: "sea" has one, "ocean" two, "butterfly" three. Counting them is how a haiku keeps its shape, and how any line keeps its rhythm.
How to count them
Say the line slowly and clap or tap once for every beat. Or rest your hand under your chin as you speak: your jaw drops once for every syllable.
On paper, count vowel sounds, not vowel letters. "Boat" has two vowel letters but one sound, and a silent e at the end adds nothing, so "stone" is one syllable. A final -le after a consonant is a syllable of its own: "little" has two.
"the tide car-ries salt": 5 syllables
Forms that count syllables
- Haiku: three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.
- Tanka: a haiku with two more lines of 7, so 5, 7, 5, 7, 7.
- Cinquain: five lines of 2, 4, 6, 8 and 2 syllables, the form Adelaide Crapsey made.
- Syllabic verse: every line the same count, or a pattern of counts repeated stanza by stanza.
A haiku, counted
"A gull on the pier": 5
"waits for the fer-ry at dawn": 7
"the tide car-ries salt": 5
Syllables and stress
Most English verse counts stresses as well as syllables. Iambic pentameter, Shakespeare's line, has ten syllables in five pairs, each soft then strong: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" A syllabic form counts the beats alone, which makes it the easiest place to start.
Counting syllables in the game
Poetry Game gives the Syllable Clock badge to everyone who writes a poem of two lines or more with the same number of syllables in every line, empty lines left out. In an English game it counts each word's groups of vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u and y), less a silent e at the end, and at least one for every word: "stone" is one syllable, "little" two.
It's a quick count, not a dictionary's, so a word now and then comes out a beat short: the game counts "poem" and "fire" as one syllable each. Pick a count before you start (seven or eight is the easiest), and tap each line out before you move on to the next.