Haiku Checker — Verify the 5-7-5 rule and traditional form

Traditional haiku do — a kigo (seasonal reference) anchors the moment in a natural cycle. Modern English haiku often skip it. The Checker will flag whether your candidate has a clear kigo without docking points for omitting one; if the rest of the haiku works, it works.

A 'cutting word' — the pivot that splits a haiku into two contrasting images that resonate against each other. In Japanese, particles like ya, kana, and keri serve this role. In English, it's usually a dash, colon, or strong line break. Without juxtaposition, a haiku reads as flat description.

Strictly speaking, no — Japanese on (sound units) aren't identical to English syllables, and many serious haiku poets in English write shorter (often 11-14 syllables total). But 5-7-5 is the convention most readers expect, and it's what schools teach, so we check it.

The live syllable counter uses a naive vowel-group algorithm — accurate ~95% of the time for common English words. Tricky words like 'fire' (1 syllable in some dialects, 2 in others) or 'hour' may be miscounted. Sonnet 4.6 sanity-checks the count and will flag disagreement.

Yes — 2 tool runs per visitor per day, shared across all Storgy tools. Resets every 24 hours. No signup, no account.

Each check lives at a permanent URL. Bookmark it, send it to a workshop, or post it. The page is reachable to anyone with the link.

No — and won't. Haiku is one of the few forms where the tradition explicitly resists ghostwriting; the value is in the discipline of writing one yourself. The Checker tells you whether yours holds together.

This tool only checks haiku. Senryu (similar form, human-foible focus) would mostly pass too, since the structural rules overlap. Tanka (5-7-5-7-7) and longer forms aren't supported here.