HOW VERSE IS MEASURED

Hear the beat
in a line.

Metre is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse.

English poetry mostly counts both: how many syllables are stressed, and where they fall. Learn five feet and a way of tapping along, and most traditional poems open up.

da-DUM times five

Name a foot

Closed hardback books stacked on a wooden desk by a window in soft morning light, with a pair of reading glasses — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

Read it aloud
Mark the stresses
Count the feet
Your ear does most of the work

THE SHORT ANSWER

Stresses,
grouped into feet.

A foot is one beat's worth of syllables.
A line is named by how many feet it holds.

THE FOOT

One stress and its neighbours

A foot usually holds one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed. "Unite" is an iamb, "garden" a trochee, "basketball" a dactyl.

Name a foot

THE LINE

Pentameter means five

A pentameter line has five feet, a tetrameter four. Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse: a 10-syllable line.

Scan a line

THE EFFECT

Listeners notice

In a 2013 study, stanzas with regular metre were rated more aesthetically pleasing than the same stanzas with the metre broken.

See the study

A QUICK FOOT CHECK

Which foot
is this?

Pick a foot to see its pattern and an example word. The bar shows how much of the foot is stressed: one syllable in three, one in two, or both.

Foot check

Choose a footIambTrocheeAnapestDactylSpondee

Iambda-DUM

An unstressed syllable then a stressed one, as in "unite" and "provide". The Poetry Foundation calls it the most common foot in English poetry.

TrocheeDUM-da

A stressed syllable then an unstressed one, as in "garden" and "highway". It gives a falling rhythm.

Anapestda-da-DUM

Two unstressed syllables then a stressed one, as in "underfoot" and "overcome". Often described as a galloping metre.

DactylDUM-da-da

A stressed syllable then two unstressed ones, as in "poetry" and "basketball". Like the trochee, it falls.

SpondeeDUM-DUM

Two stressed syllables, as in "hog-wild". A university scanning guide lists it among the feet used to fill out lines.

Sources: Poetry Foundation glossary entries for meter, foot, iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl and spondee; Washington State University, On Prosody: Tips for Scanning Poetry.

Definitions and example words from the Poetry Foundation glossary; da-DUM patterns from a Washington State University prosody handout.

TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING

Small changes,
heard at once.

One number from the standard line,
one from an experiment that broke it.

10 syllables

Syllables in a line of blank verse

Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. The Poetry Foundation calls it the predominant rhythm of traditional English dramatic and epic poetry, as it is considered closest to English speech.

BLANK VERSE · POETRY FOUNDATION

1–2 per line

Syllables added per line to break the metre

Researchers took 60 German stanzas and made non-metered versions by adding one or two syllables to each line. The 17 listeners rated metered stanzas as more aesthetically pleasing.

METRE STUDY · FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY 2013

The study was small and used German folk-song style stanzas; rhyme had a similar effect. The authors link both to ease of processing.

FOUR STEPS TO SCAN A LINE

Read it, tap it,
then mark it.

Scansion means dividing a line into feet of stressed and unstressed syllables. These steps follow a classic university prosody handout.

Read it aloud
Listen for the natural emphasis. Tapping a foot or a hand on the desk on each stress helps you hear it.
Start with long words
Say two- and three-syllable words normally: a-BOVE, not A-bove; MUR-mur-ing, not mur-MUR-ing. They anchor the line.
Mark stresses, then the rest
Put a / over stressed syllables first, then mark the unstressed ones with a small curved breve.
Split into feet and count
Group the marks into feet. Five iambs make iambic pentameter; read a few lines, as one line may vary.

A person seen from behind wearing headphones, listening quietly in a calm room — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

A hand holding a pencil over the cover of a closed notebook on a wooden table, ready to mark a line — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

RISING AND FALLING

Which way
the line leans.

Feet that end on the stress, the iamb and the anapest, are called rising metre. Feet that start on it, the trochee and the dactyl, are falling metre. The difference is easy to hear: compare "unite" with "garden".

Lines are named by their number of feet: dimeter has two, trimeter three, tetrameter four, pentameter five and hexameter six. Put the foot and the count together and you have a name such as iambic pentameter or trochaic tetrameter.

Questions

Questions people ask

What is metre in poetry?

The rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. The Poetry Foundation says the main kind in English poetry is accentual-syllabic, which counts both stresses and syllables.

What is a metrical foot?

The basic unit of accentual-syllabic metre. A foot usually contains one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. The standard feet are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee and pyrrhic.

What does iambic pentameter mean?

A line of five iambs, each an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, so ten syllables in all. Without rhyme it is called blank verse.

Do poems have to keep perfect metre?

No. A first line may contain spondees or other feet that throw off a reading, which is why scanning guides suggest reading more than one line to find the main pattern.

Does metre change how a poem is received?

In one 2013 experiment, listeners rated stanzas with regular metre as more aesthetically pleasing and more emotionally intense than versions with the metre broken. Rhyme had similar effects.

Hear the beat
in a line.