Haiku Syllable Counter — Check Your 5-7-5 Line by Line

Both are defensible, and that is exactly the problem with tools that give you a single number. Most speakers say it as one beat ("fyre"), but drawn out it is two ("fi-er"). This counter flags it, shows you both options, and lets you pick — then recounts the line. The same applies to hour, our, flower, power, prayer, cruel and real.

A traditional English haiku has three lines of five, seven and five syllables — seventeen in total. It comes from Japanese haiku, which uses seventeen on rather than seventeen syllables. Because on are shorter than English syllables, seventeen English syllables carries noticeably more content than a Japanese haiku does, which is why many modern English haiku poets write shorter.

Yes, and many contemporary English-language haiku poets prefer it. Seventeen English syllables tends to overshoot what a Japanese haiku actually holds, so 3-5-3 or other short forms often land closer to the original spirit. Select 3-5-3 in the form dropdown and every line is checked against that instead.

Two — hai-ku. In Japanese it is three on (ha-i-ku), because the long vowel in "hai" counts as two beats. That difference is a neat illustration of why Japanese haiku and English haiku are not counting the same thing.

Yes. Switch the language toggle to Japanese and it counts on (morae) rather than syllables: each kana is one beat, small ya/yu/yo bind to the kana before them and add nothing, and both n and the long vowel mark take a beat of their own. Paste kana directly. Romanised Japanese falls back to a vowel-group estimate, which is less reliable than kana.

Click the word in the breakdown and type the count you want. Every total updates immediately and your correction sticks for the rest of the session. No automated counter is perfect on English — the useful thing is being able to fix it rather than argue with it.

The form is identical — both are 5-7-5. The difference is subject: haiku traditionally concerns nature and the seasons and carries a seasonal reference, while senryū is about human nature and is often ironic or comic. Structurally this tool checks them the same way.

Yes. Tanka is 5-7-5-7-7 across five lines — the haiku pattern plus two seven-syllable lines. Choose it from the form dropdown and all five lines are checked.

No. The counting happens in JavaScript inside your browser. There is no server to send it to, which matters if you are checking unpublished work you intend to submit somewhere.