Stroke order: Difference between revisions

Stroke order (Chinese: 筆順 bǐshùn; Japanese: 筆順 hitsujun or 書き順 kaki-jun) refers to the way in which Chinese characters are written. The stroke order of a character gives the order and direction in which the brush strokes, or simply "strokes", are written.

Chinese characters are used in various forms in modern Chinese languages, Japanese, and, in South Korea, for Korean. They are known as hànzì in Mandarin, kanji in Japanese, and hanja or hanmun in Korean.

Chinese characters are believed to have originally been brush-written on perishable materials such as bamboo or wood slats, which could then be bound together like Venetian blinds, and rolled for storage. Examples of such books have been found dating to the late Zhou dynasty. It is a common misconception that Chinese characters were originally carved; this stems from the fact that the earliest extant examples are in carved form on the so-called oracle bones, scapulomancy fortune-telling devices dating to the Shang dynasty. The oracle bones were animal bones, generally turtle shells and the scapulae of oxen and other animals, into which pits were dug. These pits were heated to produce cracks which were read by diviners, and the date, diviner's name, topics divined, and sometimes answers were then written on and carved into the bones (see image). However, these were merely one of several concurrent media to which characters were applied, and it is only the carved, harder materials which survived. The use of scapulomancy gradually gave way to other forms of divination. By the late Zhou dynasty, surviving examples of writing on bamboo, silk and finally paper appear.

Although it would take over a thousand years for uniform, defined forms for each character to appear, now, as then, characters comprise a number of strokes which must be written in a prescribed order. A stroke is a single movement of the writing instrument, in modern times most commonly a pen, pencil, or writing brush.

Stroke order can therefore refer to the numerical order in which strokes are written, or to the direction in which the writing instrument (brush, pen, or pencil) must move in writing a particular stroke.

The precise number of Chinese characters in existence is disputed. The Japanese "Daikanwa Jiten", a modern comprehensive dictionary of Chinese characters, includes fifty thousand, and more recently published Chinese dictionaries have included more than eighty thousand, although whether these are all unique characters or merely obscure variant forms is debated. Regardless of the total number, literacy in Chinese requires knowledge of three to five thousand characters, and Japanese two to three thousand characters.

The number of strokes per character for most characters is between one and thirty, but the number of strokes in some obscure characters can reach as much as seventy. In the twentieth century, drastic simplification of Chinese characters took place in mainland China, greatly reducing the number of strokes in each character, and a similar but more moderate simplification also took place in Japan. However, the basic rules of stroke order remained the same. Taiwan continues to use the unsimplified forms, often called traditional or regular forms.

The rules for stroke order evolved to facilitate vertical writing, to maximize ease of writing and reading, to aid in producing uniform characters, and — since a person who has learned the rules can infer the stroke order of most characters — to ease the process of learning to write. They were also influenced by the highly stylized so-called grass script style, in which each Chinese character is written as a continuous brush stroke. In this style of writing, stroke order is all-important, since a variant of the stroke order creates a completely different visual representation. The present-day rules for stroke order were developed from those used for writing in this so-called "grass script".

While children must learn and use correct stroke order in school, adults may ignore or forget the normalised stroke order for certain characters, or develop idiosyncratic ways of writing. While this is rarely a problem in day-to-day writing, in calligraphy, stroke order is vital; incorrectly ordered or written strokes can produce a visually unappealing or, occasionally, incorrect character. The Eight Principles of Yong (永字八法 Pinyin: yǒngzì bā fǎ; Japanese: eiji happō; Korean: 영자팔법, yeongjapalbeop, yŏngjap'albŏp) uses the single character 永, meaning "eternity", to teach the eight most basic strokes.

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Ancient China —

Jiǎgǔwén Jīnwén Dàzhuàn Xiǎozhuàn Lìshū Kǎishū (t) Kǎishū (s)

In archaic China, the Jiǎgǔwén characters (Oracle script), carved on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons (see Oracle bones) showed no indication of stroke order. The graph of each semantic meaning such as "Man" or "Horse" show huge variations depending of which oracle bones one looks at, and the "stroke order" was probably the stroke order of the local pyromantic divin.

With the development of Jīnwén and Dàzhuàn (Bronzeware script and Large Seal Script) one continues to see "cursive" signs which also do not indicate a clear a stroke order. Moreover, it is evident that even as late as the development of Large seal (Dàzhuàn) style, each archaic kingdom of current China had its own set of characters.

Imperial China —

In Imperial China, the graphs on the old steles —some being as far as 2,200 years old and in Xiaozhuan style— start to reveal indications of the stroke order of the time.

About 220 BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first to conquer all China, and then impose several reforms, in which the Li Si's Characters uniformisation, imposing a set of 3.000 standardized "Xiǎozhuàn" characters. But the style is still not enough "geometrical" to read a stroke order from graphs on steles, and every paper's calligraphies of the time were lost.

The true starting point of the possibility to determine the stroke order of old style is the Lìshū style (Clerical script) which is more geometric and more similar to the current regular style. In theory, by looking the steles' graphs and the exact place of each stroke, we can see an "hierarchisation" of priority between the strokes, which indicate us the stroke order use by the calligrapher or stele sculptors.

The first apparition of Kǎishū style (regular script)—still in use nowadays—more regular and geometric, allows us to read more clearly the hierachisation and so the stroke order use to write on the steles. It is to notice that this analyze show that the stroke order 1,000 years before was close but was not the same that in the end of Imperial China. An other thing is that some graphs in the stele show clearly the stroke order, while current Kǎishū graphs, still using the same stroke order, doesn't show clearly the stroke order. By example, the stroke order of 广 is really clear if we read the Kangxi dictionary of 1716; but if we read a book print in 2024, the official stroke order (the same) will not appear clearly (see here). The Kangxi and current shapes have tiny differences, while current stroke order is still exactly the same, according to old style.

The official shape of every radical and characters continue to move along history. It is also important to note that "graph" and "stroke order" are closely linked.

It is important to note that nowadays the "official stroke order" of CJK characters varies from country to country. In fact, most characters are written in exactly the same stroke order everywhere, because their shape clearly dictates a particular order. However, there are some radicals which are graphically unclear, and so need a conventional stroke order, which may be different in different countries. This is mainly because the calligraphies and "Grass style" evolved differently in Imperial China, Modern and Communist China, Japan, and Korea, so we can note 3 official "schools" of stroke order :

• Traditional stroke order: Imperial China, ROC in China from 1911 to 1949, modern Taiwan and Hong Kong. This stroke order follows traditional Chinese calligraphy and Chinese Grass style.
• Japanese stroke order: Modern Japan and Korea. This stroke order follows the traditions of Japanese calligraphy and Japanese Grass style. The occupation of Korea by Japan (1895-1945), and their close intellectual and artistic exchanges meant that they developed similar calligraphies and now follow the same stroke order. Some Japanese Kanji were reformed in 1946.
• Modern stroke order: Modern Mainland China (PRC). The Chinese government reformed the Chinese character set in 1956, and also reformed the stroke order. A notable "innovation" of this stroke order reform was the conception of a "horizontal writing" stroke order, to facilitate horizontal writing.

Example of differing stroke orders : 戈 gē, "Halberd"

The Traditional "Halberd" stroke order, which developed in texts written from top to bottom. Ancient China, current Taiwan.

The Modern "Halberd" stroke order, adapted for horizontal writing. PRC, post-1956 reform.

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Principal rules Top before bottom… Horizontal strokes before intersecting vertical strokes… Left before right… Left vertical stroke (usually) before top horizontal stroke… Horizontal "support stroke" in last… (Chinese order; Japanese stroke order has strokes 3 and 4 reversed) Center stroke before wings… Left-falling strokes before right-falling strokes… Minor strokes (often) last. Other details to note:

Rules according to Zhongwen.com

1. Write from left to right, and from top to bottom.

As a general rule, characters are written from left to right, and from top to bottom. For example, among the first characters usually learned is the word "one," which is written with a single horizontal line: 一. This character has one stroke which is written from left to right (see image).

The character for "two" has two strokes: 二. In this case, both are written from left to right, but the top stroke is written first. The character for "three" has three strokes: 三. Each stroke is written from left to right, starting with the uppermost stroke.

This rule applies also to more complex characters. For example, 校 can be divided into two. The entire left side (木) is written before the right side (交). There are some exceptions to this rule, mainly occurring when the right side of a character has a lower enclosure (see below), for example 誕 and 健. In this case, the left side is written first, followed by the right side, and finally the lower enclosure.

When there are upper and lower components, the upper components are written first, then the lower components, as in 品 and 襲.

2. Horizontal lines are written from left to right; vertical lines are written from top to bottom

3. Horizontal before vertical

When strokes cross, horizontal strokes are usually written before vertical strokes: the character for "ten," 十, has two strokes written as follows: 一 → 十.

4. There are some circumstances where the vertical stroke is written before a horizontal, such as when the character ends in a horizontal stroke at the bottom. E.g., 上 is written 一 then | then _.

5. Cutting strokes last

Vertical strokes that "cut" through a character are written after the horizontal strokes they cut through, as in 書 and 筆.

Horizontal strokes that cut through a character are written last, as in 母 and 海.

6. Diagonals right-to-left before left-to-right

Right-to-left diagonals (ノ) are written before left-to-right diagonals (乀): 文.

7. Centre verticals before outside "wings"

Vertical centre strokes are written before vertical or diagonal outside strokes; left outside strokes are written before right outside strokes: 小 and 水.

8. Outside before inside

Outside enclosing strokes are written before inside strokes; bottom strokes are written last (see 4): 日 and 口. This applies also to characters that have no bottom stroke, such as 同 and 月.

9. Left vertical before enclosing

Left vertical strokes are written before enclosing strokes. In the following two examples, the leftmost vertical stroke (|) is written first, followed by the uppermost and rightmost lines (┐) (which are written as one stroke): 日 and 口.

10. Bottom enclosing strokes last

Bottom enclosing strokes are always written last: 道, 週, 画.

11. Dots and minor strokes last

Minor strokes are usually written last, as the small "dot" in the following: 玉.

There are some thirty distinct types of strokes recognized in Chinese characters, some of them compound strokes. Many of these have no agreed-upon name.

A stroke is defined as everything you do until the rules of calligraphy say you have to lift the pen or brush for the next stroke. The table below contains the various elements that themselves can be a stroke, or can combine to form a compound stroke.

These basic strokes combine to produce all others. The dot, diǎn, is special in that it is rarely a real dot. Instead it is a small stroke pointing in one of several directions. It is often long enough for beginners to confuse it with the nà or piě strokes. Indeed, one can say 長點 cháng diǎn "long diǎn" for such strokes. Similarly, one can qualify the other names, e.g. 短横 duǎn hēng "short héng", or 平捺 píng nà "flat nà".

Zhé and gōu, are particularly important in that they never occur alone, but always form combinations.

For example, a 豎折 shùzhé goes down(Ê), then turns rightwards into a horizontal stroke. A 横折 héngzhé(Í) goes right, then turns downwards into a vertical stroke. In other words, in those examples a zhé is a ninety-degree turn from a hēng into a shù or vice-versa.

A 横鉤 hénggōu goes right, then hooks back down. A 豎鉤 shùgōu goes down, then hooks back to the left, thus: 亅.

The wān and xié strokes are usually found in combination with a hook. A 斜鉤xiégōu goes down before slanting away to the right and ending with a hook. A 彎鉤 wāngōu bends out before coming up with a hook towards the concave part to the left. However, a 豎彎鉤 shùwāngōu is a straight line down that bends into a flat line going rightwards before ending with a hook; this is also known 卧鉤 wògōu "crouch then hook" or 平鉤 pínggōu "flat then hook".

The Unicode "CJK Strokes" range encodes 16 basic strokes, at codepoints U+31C0–31CF (as of Unicode version 4.1):

• Hadamitzky, Wolfgang & Mark Spahn. A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System. Charles E. Tuttle Co. ISBN 0-8048-2077-5.
• Henshall, Kenneth G. A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Charles E. Tuttle Co. ISBN 0-8048-2038-4.
• Keightley, David N. (1978). Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-02969-0
• O'Neill, P.G. Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged for Learning and Reference. Weatherhill. ISBN 0-8348-0222-8.
• Pye, Michael The Study of Kanji: A Handbook of Japanese Characters. Hokuseido Press.
  • Includes a translation of the Japanese Ministry of Education rules on Kanji stroke order.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to CJK stroke order.

• Chinese character
• East Asian calligraphy
• Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts

• Animated stroke order from USC Chinese Department
• Learn Chinese and Chinese radicals
• Kanji alive, an interactive online tool for learning Japanese kanji, featuring stroke order animations.
• cchar.com Online query of stroke order animations.
• SODER Project, lets you even download Japanese kanji stroke order diagrams.
• CJK stroke order project, Free Wikipedia project making and sharing animations and images showing stroke order according to the 3 ways (Traditional hanzi, Modern hanzi, Japanese kanji).