How to use it
- Type or paste English text. Each line is counted on its own.
- Choose Per line to see the syllable total in front of every line, or Per word for a list of words with their counts.
- For a haiku, enter exactly three lines. The note under the result says whether they make 5-7-5.
How it works
The word is lowercased and stripped of everything but letters. Each run of the vowels a, e, i, o, u and y counts as one syllable. Then three corrections apply when the word has more than one syllable: a silent final e (make, silence) is dropped, a final -ed is dropped unless it follows t or d (jumped, but wanted), and a final -es is dropped unless it follows s, x, z, ch, sh, c or g (makes, but boxes). A consonant plus le at the end keeps its syllable (table). Finally, a vowel pair that is usually pronounced apart (ia, io, eo, ua, uo, iu) adds one, except after c, s, t, g, x or l, where it is normally one sound as in nation or social. Every word counts at least one.
Example
“Splashing, then silence”: splash-ing is 2, then is 1 and si-lence is 2, which makes 5. With “An old silent pond” (5) and “A frog jumps into water” (7), the three lines are a 5-7-5 haiku.
Tips
- Hyphenated words are split at the hyphen and counted as separate words.
- Words with unusual spelling, abbreviations and names are the most likely to be off by one; adjust the total by hand.
- For a longer text, the word counter and the readability score tool show other measures of the same writing.