How to count syllables online
- Type one word to see how many syllables it has, or paste a sentence, verse or speech.
- Read the total syllable count and the average syllables per word at the top.
- Check the word-by-word list. Each word shows its count, so you can spot a word you pronounce differently.
- For poems, keep one line of verse per line in the box. Three lines trigger the haiku check; more lines show syllables per line.
How many syllables in a word: examples
| Word | Split | Syllables |
|---|---|---|
| cat | cat | 1 |
| very | ver-y | 2 |
| table | ta-ble | 2 |
| people | peo-ple | 2 |
| jumped | jumped | 1 |
| wanted | want-ed | 2 |
| haiku | hai-ku | 2 |
| beautiful | beau-ti-ful | 3 |
| syllable | syl-la-ble | 3 |
| education | ed-u-ca-tion | 4 |
| readability | read-a-bil-i-ty | 5 |
Notice “jumped” versus “wanted”: the -ed ending only adds a syllable after a t or d sound. Rules like this one are what the syllable checker applies to every word.
The counting method
- Lowercase the word and drop anything that is not a letter, so “Don’t!” becomes “dont”. Hyphenated words are counted part by part.
- Remove endings that are usually silent: a final e (“make”), -es after most consonants (“hopes”) and -ed unless it follows t or d (“jumped”, but not “wanted”).
- Count the remaining vowel groups. A y counts as a vowel except at the start of a word or between vowels (“yellow”, “beyond”).
- Apply corrections for letter patterns that split or merge sounds, such as -ia in “piano” (one extra) or -tion in “nation” (no extra), and add one for a consonant plus -le (“ta-ble”).
- Look up a short list of common exceptions such as “business”, “idea” and “recipe”. Every word has at least one syllable.
The pattern list is adapted from the Lingua::EN::Syllable Perl module published on CPAN, with extra rules for -ed, -es and y.
Limits of any automatic syllable count
- Pronunciation varies. Words like “fire”, “every”, “poem” and “caramel” are said with a different number of syllables in different accents, and no rule can choose for you.
- Names, borrowed words and abbreviations follow other spelling rules and are the most likely to be off.
- Digits are skipped. Write numbers out (“twenty-one”) if they should count in a line of verse.
When the count matters, as in a contest or class assignment, read the line aloud and tap out the beats to confirm.
Haiku syllable counter: 5-7-5
A haiku in English is traditionally written as three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Here is an example the counter accepts:
Pale moon on the lake
Paper boats drift past the dock
Morning finds them gone
The lines count 5 (pale, moon, on, the, lake), 7 (pa-per, boats, drift, past, the, dock) and 5 (mor-ning, finds, them, gone). Add “The” to the first line and the check flags it as 6 of 5.
A syllable counter for poems and songs
With more than three lines, the tool lists the syllables in every line, which helps with meter. A line of iambic pentameter, for example, has five two-syllable feet, so 10 syllables, and lines of a song sung to the same melody often need matching counts.
Syllables per word also drive readability scores. The Flesch-Kincaid calculator uses this same counter to measure how hard a text is to read.