Haiku such as "kyo" () may look like two syllables to English speakers but are in fact a single "on" (as well as a single syllable) in Japanese. In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku. Shorter haiku are very much more common in 21st century English haiku writing. Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about 12 syllables in English approximate the duration of 17 Japanese "on". Also in translations four lines is more appropriate for
Haiku in languages other than Japanese the Arab haiku poets use the three short lines structure, this has not always been considered as a strict rule. Literary critics in the Arab world have not reached an agreement yet whether the haiku poems written by the young poets can be considered a new form of poetry or merely a different name for the (already popular) flash fiction. In July 2015, the "Poetry Letters Magazine" acknowledged the Arabic haiku as a distinct form of poetry by publishing, for the first time, haiku poems of 11 Arab poets from Syria, Morocco, Iraq, Jordan, and Tunisia. Haiku in languages other