Iambic Pentameter Checker

A real caveat on meter

Almost no real poem — including Shakespeare's own sonnets — is written in perfectly regular iambic pentameter line after line. Metrical substitution (a trochee or spondee in place of an iamb, especially at the start of a line) is a normal, valued part of English verse, not an error. This tool checks the strict textbook pattern so you can see exactly where a line departs from it — a "not perfect" result is often a deliberate, good choice, not a mistake to fix.

Stress data comes from the same dictionary as the rest of this site; words it doesn't recognize show as ? rather than a guessed stress, since guessing stress position wrong would be misleading.

Also checking end-rhymes across a stanza? Use the rhyme scheme checker.