Savitri is written in iambic pentameter in Blank verse with or without enjambment. In English, the rhythm is created through the use of stress, alternating between unstressed and stressed syllables. An English unstressed syllable is equivalent to a classical short syllable, while an English stressed syllable is equivalent to a classical long syllable. When a pair of syllables is arranged as a short followed by a long, or an unstressed followed by a stressed, pattern, that foot is said to be "iambic". The English word "trapeze" is an example of an iambic pair of syllables, since the word is made up of two syllables ("tra—peze") and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable ("tra—PEZE", rather than "TRA—peze"). An iambic pentameter is a line made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables.

An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written as:

da DUM

A standard line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

Some lines in the exercises are colour coded to indicate unstressed and stressed words.