Haiku in English founded National Haiku Writing Month, also known as NaHaiWriMo. It has been held in February of each year, starting in 2011, with the objective to write at least one haiku per day all month long—"the shortest month of the year for the shortest genre of poetry," according to Welch. Although the vast majority of haiku published in English are three lines long, variants also occur. The most common variation from the three-line standard is one line, sometimes called a "monoku". It emerged from being more than an occasional exception during the late 1970s. The one-line form, based on an analogy
Haiku in English with the one-line vertical column in which Japanese haiku are often printed, was lent legitimacy principally by three people: The single-line haiku usually contains fewer than seventeen syllables. A caesura (pause) may be appropriate, dictated by sense or speech rhythm (following the traditional Japanese tradition of a break, marked by the Kireji), and usually little or no punctuation. This form was used by John Wills and, more recently, has been practiced by poets such as M. Kettner, Janice Bostok, Jim Kacian, Chris Gordon, Scott Metz, Stuart Quine, John Barlow, and many others. As the last two examples in particular illustrate,