Count syllables per word and line, and check a haiku.
A syllable is one beat of a word, built around a vowel sound: cat has one, table has two, banana has three. This tool counts them in two steps. First it looks the word up in a built-in list of about 400 irregular words that spelling rules get wrong, such as people, being, idea, business, poem and eye. Counts in the list follow Merriam-Webster's dictionary entries. Any word not in the list goes through spelling rules. It counts the groups of vowels, drops a silent final e, counts -ed only after t or d (wanted has two, walked has one), counts -es only after s, x, z, c, g, sh or ch (boxes has two, makes has one) and treats -tion, -sion, -cial and -cious as one syllable. It adds a syllable for vowel pairs that split, such as the ia in media and the io in radio. The Count mode shows every word with its number and whether it came from the list or from the rules.
A haiku in English is usually written as three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables, 17 in all. A tanka has five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables, 31 in all. Choose Haiku 5-7-5 or Tanka 5-7-5-7-7 and the tool compares each line to its target and tells you whether it is Too few, Too many or OK, with a yes or no for the whole poem. Put one line of the poem on each line of the box. The sample is a three-line haiku that counts 5, 7, 5. Many poets treat 5-7-5 as a guide rather than a law, because Japanese counts sounds, not English syllables, so a result of 16 or 18 is not a mistake in the poem.
Counts come from a dictionary of common irregular words plus spelling rules, and can be off by one for unusual words. English spelling is irregular, so some words will be off. Names, borrowed words and rare words suffer most: the rules cannot know how a name is said. People also say some words with different counts: fire and hour can be one or two, and every can be two or three. For a poem or a lyric where one syllable matters, read the word aloud, tap out the beats and trust your ear over the count. Numbers and symbols are not counted, so write 2024 as words. A hyphenated word such as well-known is counted as two words. Only the letters of a word count.
The counting runs in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, stored or put in the page address, and it is gone when you close the tab. Only your choice of mode is remembered here. Text up to 50,000 characters is counted. The word table shows the first 300 words so long texts stay quick, while the totals include every word.
A haiku in English is traditionally 17 syllables in three lines of 5, 7 and 5. A tanka is 31 syllables over five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7. Choose the matching mode to see each line checked against its target.
It checks a list of about 400 irregular words first, then counts vowel groups with rules for silent e, -ed, -es, -le and endings like -tion. For example table has 2, banana has 3 and information has 4.
Counts come from a dictionary of common irregular words plus spelling rules, so names, borrowed words and rare words can be off by one. Words marked Rules in the table were not in the dictionary list. Words like fire or every are said with different counts by different speakers.
Yes. Every line of your text gets its own total, shown before the line in the result, such as 5 | Morning light climbs slow. The stat tiles show the total, the word count, the lines and the average of syllables per word.
No. Only letters count. A number like 2024 has no letters and counts 0, so write it as words (twenty twenty-four) if you need it counted. Apostrophes are ignored: don't is 1 and o'clock is 2.
It is built for English. Accents are removed before counting, so café gives 2, but the vowel rules are English ones and will miscount Spanish, French or German words, where vowels are said differently.