Poetry other variations of "shi" poetry, generally either a four line (quatrain, or "jueju") or else an eight line poem is normal; either way with the even numbered lines rhyming. The line length is scanned by according number of characters (according to the convention that one character equals one syllable), and are predominantly either five or seven characters long, with a caesura before the final three syllables. The lines are generally end-stopped, considered as a series of couplets, and exhibit verbal parallelism as a key poetic device. The "old style" verse ("gushi") is less formally strict than the "jintishi", or regulated
Verse (poetry) is too pedestrian or too incompetent to be classed as poetry. Blank verse is poetry written in regular, metrical, but unrhymed, lines, almost always composed of iambic pentameters. <poem> </poem> Free verse is usually defined as having no fixed meter and no end rhyme. Although free verse may include end rhyme, it commonly does not. <poem> </poem> Verse (poetry) In the countable sense, a verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition. However, verse has come to represent any division or grouping of words in a poetic composition, with groupings traditionally having been referred to as stanzas.