Haiku Checker
Check whether your poem follows the haiku 5-7-5 syllable pattern, with a per-word syllable breakdown you can correct.
Type a haiku above to check its 5-7-5 syllable pattern.
Total syllables: 0 of 17
Counts are estimates — activate a word to cycle its syllable count.
How it works
A traditional English-language haiku is three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables — 17 in total. Paste or type your poem and this haiku checker splits it into lines and words, estimates the syllables in each word, and tells you instantly whether you have hit the 5-7-5 pattern or how many syllables each line is over or under.
English has no perfectly reliable syllable rule, so the counter uses a well-known vowel-group heuristic: it lowercases the word, strips a silent final e (keeping the syllabic -le in words like lit-tle), keeps -ed as its own syllable only after t or d (want-ed, but walked), keeps -es after a sibilant (wish-es, box-es), applies suffix rules for -ely, -ness, -less, -ful, -ment and -ship, then counts the remaining vowel groups. A curated exception list of roughly 120 tricky words (idea, beautiful, evening, poem, lion) is checked first. Words that slip through are easy to fix by hand: activate any word chip to cycle its count.
Everything runs in your browser with plain JavaScript — your poem is never uploaded, logged or stored anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Is my haiku 5-7-5?
Paste your poem into the box and the checker splits it into three lines, counts the syllables in each one and tells you straight away whether you have 5, 7 and 5 syllables — or exactly how many syllables each line is over or under. The total should come to 17.
How does the tool count syllables in a word?
It uses a vowel-group heuristic: it lowercases the word, drops a silent final e (but keeps the syllabic -le in words like lit-tle), treats -ed as its own syllable only after t or d (want-ed, but walked), keeps -es after a sibilant (wish-es, box-es), applies rules for -ely, -ness, -less, -ful, -ment and -ship, then counts the remaining vowel groups. A curated list of about 120 tricky words such as idea, beautiful, evening and poem is checked first.
What if a word's syllable count is wrong?
English syllable counting has no perfect rule, so every word is shown as a clickable chip with its count. Click or tab to a word and press Enter to cycle its syllable count, and the line totals and the 5-7-5 verdict update immediately. Your correction applies to every occurrence of that word in the poem.