TOOLTIKI Lovable tool, really free
Text Counting

Syllable counter

Your text
0 Words
0 Characters
0 Sentences
0 Paragraphs
Characters without spaces 0
Unique words 0
Lines 0
Average word length 0
Longest word
Reading time 0 sec
Speaking time 0 sec
Local · estimated from vowel groups

Type something and the most frequent words show up here.

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Syllables are estimated by counting vowel groups and discarding a silent trailing "e". That is right for the large majority of ordinary English words and wrong for a stubborn minority — which is a limit of English spelling, not of the tool.

How to count syllables

1 Type or paste the line. A haiku line, a lyric, or a whole paragraph.
2 Read the syllable total. For a single word, type just that word.
3 For anything metrical, say it aloud and trust your ear over the number.

No algorithm gets this exactly right, because English spelling does not determine syllable count. The vowel-group rule handles "com-pu-ter" and "ta-ble" correctly and then fails on the standard counterexamples: "business" is two syllables but scans as three, "poem" is two but looks like one, and "fire" divides differently depending on the accent saying it. Dictionaries disagree with each other on a surprising number of words for the same reason. Treat the number as a fast approximation for readability work and as a starting point for anything metrical, where your ear is the authority.

Questions

Good on the large majority of ordinary words and wrong on a stubborn minority. Words like "business", "poem" and "fire" defeat every spelling-based rule.

Brysbaert — how many words do we read per minute?
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