A syllable is a unit of speech that is made up of one or more phones (single sounds or "phonetic segments") and in turn makes up words. It influences the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic meter, its stress patterns, etc.
* Syllable Counting Technique used in both traditional metrical verse forms (see meter) and in Japanese inspired poems such as haiku and tanka. In traditional metrical forms the counting is based on the regular patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. In Japanese forms, the syllable count is based solely on the total number of syllables. Some modern poets such as Marianne Moore and Peter Reading have used this second type of syllable counting to give their work intricate structures.