The most popular way of scanning a poem is to insert markings over the stressed or unstressed syllables. A slash ("/") indicates a stressed syllable, while a dash indicates an unstressed syllable ("-"). You can also use parentheses to mark off certain words or lines that should be treated as sonnets, if you wish. Stress marks are useful tools for reading poetry quickly when time is short. But they should not be used as the only method for reading poetry, because this approach may lead to mistakes being made. For example, if a poet uses all capitals for emphasis, then using only the presence or absence of stress to identify the parts of speech could cause problems. "All capitals" would be taken as a sign that this was a line of verse, whereas actually it's part of a word. It's best to look at the whole poem before making a judgement about its structure. If you find that some lines are very short, perhaps just one word, then this might be because the poet has decided to show how brief certain words are by writing them in monosyllabic lines. This does not mean that the lines are meaningless; it's just an interesting technique used by many poets. Finally, remember that poetry is supposed to be enjoyable to read! So take your time and don't worry about making any sudden moves while reading.