Scansion

Scansion is the practice of marking the stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry to find its meter and feet.

Here is a line scanned in plain text. A bar marks each foot and capitals mark the stress.

shall i | comPARE | thee TO | a SUM | mer's DAY

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, 1609

What it is

To scan a line, read it aloud at a natural speed and mark which syllables you naturally stress. Then divide the line into feet and name the pattern. Here there are five iambs, so the line is iambic pentameter.

How to try it

Take a line you love and read it aloud at normal speed. Do not exaggerate the beat. Write the syllables on a page, mark the stressed ones, and draw a slash after each pair or triple. Then say the pattern aloud: da-DUM, da-DUM, and so on. If the marks fall evenly, you have found the meter. If one foot is off, read the line again before deciding, because many apparent errors are just a habit of stressing a word one way.

Why it matters to a writer or editor

Scansion turns a feeling about a line into something you can point at. If a line sounds off, scan it and see where the stresses stop matching the rest of the poem. Then decide whether the break is a flaw or a deliberate effect.

Frequently asked questions

Is there one right way to scan a line?

Not always. Readers can disagree on which syllables carry stress, and good poets vary their lines on purpose. Scansion describes the pattern. It does not grade the poem.