Traditional duality

There is so much knowledge in couplets that I can only briefly say:

Couplets vary in length, only one or two words are short; It can be hundreds of words long. There are various forms of couplets, such as pairs, pairs, flowing pairs, couplets, set sentence pairs and so on. But no matter what kind of couplets are used, they must have the following characteristics, commonly known as "four stresses":

First, the number of words should be equal and the sentences should be consistent. In addition to deliberately leaving the position of a word to achieve a certain effect, the number of words in the upper and lower parts must be the same, neither more nor less; Phrase structure is the same as sentence reading. (exception: Yuan Shikai has been through the ages; Long live the people of China! -couplets pay attention to neatness. This couplet is not neat. The first couplet is "Yuan Shikai", and the second couplet is "Sorry for the people of China", which means that Yuan Shikai is sorry for the people of China! It is deliberately used untidily to achieve ironic effect)

Second, it is necessary to be honest and have a harmonious tone. The traditional habit is "flat", that is, the end of the last sentence of the first couplet is flat, and the end of the last sentence of the second couplet is also flat. It doesn't have to rhyme, but it should be flat, that is, flat to voiced and voiced to flat, rhythmic and catchy to read.

Third, the parts of speech should be relative and the position should be consistent. It is generally called "virtual to virtual, real to real", which means that nouns to nouns, verbs to verbs, adjectives to adjectives, quantifiers to quantifiers, adverbs to adverbs and related words must be in the same position.

Fourth, the content should be related and run through from top to bottom. Link up and down must mean to connect with each other, up and down; In addition to the "overlapping words" in the upper couplet, there are "overlapping words" in the lower couplet (such as using compound words, overlapping rhymes, thimbles, etc.). ), generally there can be no duplicate words and phrases in couplets.