Beta This tool is still being tested on real service texts, so some words may not be divided correctly. If you find one, or have a feature request, please email me.
English Syl·la·bi·fi·er
Paste English text: a hymn, a psalm, a service text. Each word is divided into syllables using a dictionary of common and biblical words, a list of liturgical words and saints’ names, and spelling rules for anything else. Nothing you paste leaves your browser.
For Greek texts, use the Greek syllabifier.
How words are divided
Each word is looked up in a list of liturgical words and saints’ names, then in a dictionary of some 149,000 words drawn from the public-domain Moby Hyphenator (the 29,000 common and biblical ones load with the page, the rest a moment later), along with their endings (lov-eth, giv-est, glo-ri-fied). Saints’ names are generally divided as they would be pronounced in Greek (A-ca-ci-us, Pan-te-le-i-mon). Anything else is divided by spelling rules, which usually count the syllables right; in words other than names, TeX’s American English hyphenation patterns then place the breaks much as a dictionary would (reg-u-la-to-ry), though not always.
To change how a word is sung, change the source text: a hyphen forces a break (bless-ed), an apostrophe drops a syllable, dividing the rest like the full word (heav’n, o’er, vic-t’ry from vic-to-ry), and a grave accent sounds an -ed (bless-èd). Tick “Elide ‘every’” to drop a syllable from every and its compounds throughout (ev-’ry, ev-’ry-where). The option to write thē marks the where it is sung “thee”, before a vowel sound (thē an-gels, thē hour, but the one, the u-nion, the year).
Breaks follow dictionary style (Spir-it, heav-en, Chris-tian).
Phrase marks ( * ) in metered texts are removed, and lines are joined into running text, since text copied from a PDF breaks wherever the page did. A blank line is kept as a paragraph break. Straight quotes and apostrophes always become typographic ones (God’s, “Rejoice,” ’tis).
Words set entirely in capitals, as at the start of many hymns (O STRANGE wonder), are put in lower case, keeping a capital at the start of a line or sentence and on names (O LORD becomes O Lord). Other words keep the capitals they were given.