Elision
Quick answer: Elision is the omission or blending of syllables so a word fits the metre, as in o'er and heav'n. Learn how poets use elision to keep lines in step.
Elision is the omission or blending of a syllable, usually an unstressed vowel, so that a word takes up less metrical space: 'over' becomes 'o'er', 'heaven' becomes 'heav'n', 'the expanse' becomes 'th'expanse'. The apostrophe traditionally marks the spot where the sound was squeezed out. Poets elide to make words fit the metre without wrenching the sentence.
For centuries elision was standard equipment. Metrical verse demanded exact syllable counts, and English is full of little vowels that speech already swallows; elision simply wrote that swallowing down. Modern poets print full spellings more often, but the practice survives in how lines are counted, since scansion still merges syllables that ordinary pronunciation runs together.
How It Works
Elision works wherever speech already compresses. Vowel meets vowel across words: 'th'orchard', 'to attend' counted as two syllables. A soft vowel sits between consonants inside a word: 'wandering' spoken as 'wand'ring', 'murmuring' as 'murm'ring'. In this invented pentameter, elision keeps the count: 'The wand'ring lamplight settles o'er the stair.' Ten syllables, five beats. Spell both words in full and the line swells to twelve syllables and limps. Related terms name the varieties: syncope drops a sound mid-word, synaloepha merges vowels across a word boundary.
Where You Will See It
Milton's Paradise Lost is the great schoolroom of elision; his ten-syllable lines constantly blend vowels, and editors still argue over which syllables he meant to merge. Shakespeare's plays elide freely, in both spelling and implied delivery. Eighteenth century poets like Pope made elision near-systematic to keep couplets exact. Hymn books mark elisions so congregations sing in time. Even today, when you see 'e'er', 'ne'er' or 'heav'n' in an older poem, you are looking at metre negotiating with pronunciation in real time.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
In contemporary work, silent elision beats visible apostrophes: write 'wandering' and simply count it as two syllables, since that is how most readers say it anyway. Reserve archaic spellings like 'o'er' for deliberate period flavour, because to modern eyes they read as costume. When a metrical line runs one syllable long, hunt for a swallowable vowel before deleting a word; often the line already fits when spoken naturally. Contest readers scoring language notice when metre and natural speech agree, something entrants to a monthly round like Writory's can use to their advantage.
What poets can take from this
- Count syllables as you actually speak them, not as the dictionary divides them.
- Prefer silent elision in modern poems; apostrophised forms like o'er read as antique.
- Check words like every, wandering, heaven and flower, which compress naturally in speech.
- When a line runs long, look for a blendable vowel before cutting a word.
- Read Milton aloud to hear elision working at the highest level.
Try it yourself
Take a ten-line metrical draft of yours and mark every word that speech naturally compresses, then retune each line's syllable count using only those spoken elisions, changing no words at all.
Questions
What is the difference between elision and contraction?
Contraction is the everyday grammatical merging of words, like 'don't' or 'it's', while elision is the metrical omission of a syllable for rhythm, like 'heav'n' or 'th'expanse'. They overlap, but elision serves the line's count.
Why do old poems use words like o'er and e'er?
Those spellings signal that a two-syllable word should be spoken as one so the line keeps its metre. Printers marked the dropped vowel with an apostrophe, a convention that faded as strict syllable counting relaxed.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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