Description Of Limericks We Post On LimerickPress.com

Length

Limericks have five lines. That's a hard and fast rule. The coach page has a separate box to enter each of the five lines. The first, second and fifth lines of a limerick should typically be eight or nine syllables long. The other two are always shorter, with just five or six syllables. The coach page shows the syllable count as you type right below each line.

Rhyming

When it comes to rhyming, the last word of the first, second, and fifth lines are supposed to rhyme. The last word of the third and fourth lines also rhyme. But only with each other. Not with the other ones.

As a partner in rhyme, the coach page lets you click on the last word you enter on a line to generate a list of words that rhyme with it. The rhymes include names of people, places and even brands. Click any rhyme in the list to see if it's a place, a person, or just a regular word, along with its dictionary definition.

The Coach and Post pages have a rhyme summary box that fills as you write or paste a limerick. It shows the rhyme pattern at a glance. The letters A and B show rhyming words in the right place. An X means a rhyme is missing. Each box is blank until you enter words on that line.

The Rhyme Override Toggle

Sometimes a poet wants to break the rules. Why not? Perhaps a near rhyme, or a deliberate lack of a rhyme, might surprise the ears of a limerick fan in a delightful way. To enable those who march to the tune of a different drummer, there is a toggle switch that allows for one missed rhyme in a limerick to post to the Awaiting Rating Collection, even though it doesn’t quite meet the traditional definition of a limerick. When flipped on, it allows for one X in the AABBA rhyme boxes.

Rhythm

Finally, the rhythm. The beats of language are measured by linguists in syllables. Each is stressed or unstressed in normal speech. The beats are shown on the coach page under the words you type, broken up into stressed and unstressed syllables, according to the way people normally talk. A stressed syllable is shown in all CAPS.

The syllables are grouped according to a convention used by poets called feet. A poetic foot has one, two, or three syllables. The tool identifies a foot in the line you type by putting a box around it. The foot-box turns green if the stress in it falls reasonably close to a classic limerick pattern. Red if it's way off.

Limericks are built from two kinds of feet. The first, called an iamb, has two syllables that go ba-DA, like in the word "re-TURN." The second, called an anapest, goes ba-da-DUM, like in the word "un-der-STAND." The coach uses ba, da, and DUM in the foot-box to tap out the rhythm. Putting several anapests in a row is what gives limericks their incredibly memorable, bouncy rhythm. Occasionally there's a leftover unstressed syllable at the end of a line that simply says ba in its foot-box. (Such a syllable is called something so politically incorrect that I’m afraid to mention it. You can click here if you really want to know.)

Overriding the stress

Note: Sometimes the innate rhythm of a limerick deliberately pushes the reader to stress a word contrary to normal speech. You can force the coach page to stress any syllable you want within its foot-box by typing that syllable in all CAPS as you write it. That overrides the coach's inclination to follow the patterns of everyday speech in determining how that poetic foot is stressed, just in that one instance. So, if you want the coach to stress the last syllable of Elizabeth instead of the second, you tell it so by typing it as ElizaBETH.