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Stroke order for the character 言 (word) shown by shade going from black to red.
Stroke order for the character 言 (word) shown by shade going from black to red.

Stroke order (Chinese: 筆順 bǐshùn; Japanese: 筆順 hitsujun or 書き順 kaki-jun; Korean: 필순 筆順 "pilsun" or 획순 畫順 "hoeksun") refers to the correct order in which the strokes of a Chinese character are written. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument. Chinese characters are used in various forms in the modern Chinese, Japanese, and in Korean. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system They are known as hanzi in Chinese, kanji in Japanese, and hanja in Korean languages. A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with Hiragana (ひらがな 平仮名 Katakana is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system While these languages all utilize a common set of characters, the rules governing stroke order may differ in each language.

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 many as seventy. As such, official stroke order was devised to help speed, fluidity, and accuracy in composition. In the twentieth century, simplification of Chinese characters took place in mainland China, greatly reducing the number of strokes in some characters, and a similar but more moderate simplification also took place in Japan. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. The basic rules of stroke order within each language, however, remained the same.

Contents

Development

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. Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. They were also influenced by the highly cursive Grass Script style of calligraphy. Cursive script ( simplified草书 erroneously translated as Grass script is a style of Chinese calligraphy. The art of Calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian Civilizations that use or used Chinese characters.

Because writing characters in the normalised stroke order can greatly facilitate learning and memorization, children are required to learn and use correct stroke order in school; adults, however, 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, particularly in styles such as Grass Script, in which individual strokes are often combined in fluid motions without lifting the brush from the paper. Also, the accuracy of handwriting recognition software may be reduced when entering strokes out of order.

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. The character 永 yǒng, "forever" Stroke order Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin Romanization system in use

Stroke order per style

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

Ancient China

In ancient China, the Jiǎgǔwén characters carved on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons showed no indication of stroke order. Chinese civilization originated in various city-states along the Yellow River ( valley in the Neolithic era Oracle bone script ( refers to incised (or rarely brush-written ancient Chinese characters found on Oracle bones which are animal bones or turtle shells used in Oxen (singular ox) are Cattle trained as draft animals. Often they are adult castrated males In Anatomy, the scapula, omo, or shoulder blade, is the Bone that connects the Humerus (arm bone with the Clavicle (collar Tortoises or land Turtles are land-dwelling Reptiles of the family of Testudinidae', order Testudines. The plastron is the nearly flat part of the shell structure of a Turtle or Tortoise, what one would call the belly similar in composition to the Carapace The characters show huge variations from piece to piece, sometimes even within one piece. During the divination ceremony, after the cracks were made, the characters were written with a brush on the shell or bone (to be carved in a workshop later). Although the brush-written stroke order is not discernible after carving, there exists some evidence that it was not entirely idiosyncratic: a few of the characters, often marginal administrative notations recording the provenance of the shells or bones, were not later recarved, and the stroke order of these characters tends to resemble traditional and modern stroke order (Keightley 1978). For those characters (the vast majority) which were later engraved into the hard surface using a knife, perhaps by a separate individual, there is evidence (from incompletely engraved pieces) that in at least some cases all the strokes running one way were carved, then the piece was turned, and strokes running another way were then carved (Keightley).

With the development of Jīnwén (Bronzeware script) and Dàzhuàn (Large Seal Script) we continue to see "cursive" signs which also do not indicate a clear stroke order. Chinese Bronze inscriptions are writing in a variety of Chinese scripts on Chinese bronze artifacts such as zhōng bells and dǐng tripodal cauldrons Large Seal script or Great Seal script (Chinese 大篆 Dàzhuàn is a traditional reference to Chinese writing from before the Qin dynasty, and is now Moreover, it is evident that each archaic kingdom of current China had its own set of characters.

Imperial China

In Imperial China, the graphs on old steles — some dating from 200 BCE, and in Xiaozhuan style — start to reveal tiny indications of the stroke order of the time. Chinese civilization originated in various city-states along the Yellow River ( valley in the Neolithic era

About 220 BCE, the emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first to conquer all China, imposed several reforms, among them Li Si's character uniformisation, which created a set of 3300 standardized Xiǎozhuàn characters[1]. Events By place Greece Together with fellow Illyrian Scerdilaidas, Demetrius of Pharos attacks Illyrian cities under Qin Shi Huang ( (259 BC – September 10 210 BC personal name Yíng Zhèng, was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BCE to 221 BCE (during the Li Si ( (ca 280 BC - September or October 208 BC was the influential Prime Minister (or Chancellor of the feudal state and later of the dynasty of Qin, between However, stroke order could still not yet be ascertained from the steles, and no paper from that time is extant.

The true starting point of stroke order is the Lìshū style (clerical script) which is more regularized, and in some ways similar to modern text. The clerical script ( pinyin lìshū; Japanese 隷書体 Reishotai; formerly also chancery script is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which In theory, by looking the Lìshū style steles' graphs and the placement of each stroke, we can see hierarchical priority between the strokes, which indicates the stroke order used by the calligrapher or stele sculptors.

Kǎishū style (regular script) — still in use today — is more regularized, allowing clearly to guess the stroke order used to write on the steles. The regular script or standard script, or in Chinese kaishu ( and Japanese kaisho, also commonly known as standard regular It can be seen that the stroke order 1000 years ago was similar as that at the end of Imperial China. By example, the stroke order of 广 is clear in the Kangxi dictionary of 1716; but in a modern book, the official stroke order (the same) will not appear clearly. The Kangxi Dictionary was the standard Chinese dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries Year 1716 ( MDCCXVI) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a The Kangxi and current shapes have tiny differences, while current stroke order is still the same, according to old style[2].

Cursive styles and hand-written styles

Cursive styles such as Xíngshū (semi-cursive or running script) and Cǎoshū (cursive or grass script) show stroke order very clearly, as each move made by the writing tool is visible. Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. Cursive script ( simplified草书 erroneously translated as Grass script is a style of Chinese calligraphy. However, calligraphic stroke order does not always follow standard stroke order.

Native writers, moreover, create their own stroke order rules for their own use, with some tiny differences with the official stroke order taught in school.

Stroke order per polity

While the majority of characters are written in exactly the same stroke order everywhere, the "official" stroke order of Chinese characters varies from country to country because calligraphic styles evolved differently in Imperial China, Modern and Communist China, Japan, and Korea. Chinese civilization originated in various city-states along the Yellow River ( valley in the Neolithic era

Example of differing stroke orders for the character 戈 ("halberd")
Traditional stroke order, which developed in texts written from top to bottom. Ancient China, current Taiwan.
Modern stroke order, adapted for horizontal writing. PRC, post-1956 reform.

Basic rules

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 number one, which is written with a single horizontal line: 一. This character has one stroke which is written from left to right.

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:

The Chinese character meaning "person" (, Chinese: rén, Korean: in, Japanese: hito, nin; jin). The character has two strokes, the first shown here in dark, and the second in red. The black area represents the starting position of the writing instrument.
The Chinese character meaning "person" (人 animation, Chinese: rén, Korean: in, Japanese: hito, nin; jin). This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities The character has two strokes, the first shown here in dark, and the second in red. The black area represents the starting position of the writing instrument.

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 before vertical

When strokes cross, horizontal strokes are usually written before vertical strokes: the character for "ten," 十, has two strokes. The horizontal stroke 一 is written first, followed by the vertical stroke → 十.

3. 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.

4. Diagonals right-to-left before diagonals left-to-right

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

5. 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.

6. Outside before inside

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

7. 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.

8. Bottom enclosing strokes last

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

9. Dots and minor strokes last

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

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Fazzioli, Edoardo [1987]. A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( The art of Calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian Civilizations that use or used Chinese characters. The CJK strokes (also known as the CJK(V or CJKV strokes are the strokes needed to write the Chinese characters used in East Asia. Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters, calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko, New York: Abbeville Press, p. Abbeville Publishing Group is an independent book publishing company specializing in Fine art and illustrated books 13. ISBN 0896597741.  “And so the first Chinese dictionary was born, the Sān Chāng, containing 3,300 characters” 
  2. ^ 康熙字典 Kangxi Zidian, 1716. Scanned version available at www. kangxizidian. com. See by example the radicals 卩, 厂 or 广, p. 41. The 2007 common shape for those characters don't allow clearly to "guess" the stroke order, but old versions, visible on the Kangxi Zidian p. 41 clearly allow us to guess the stroke order.

References

Traditional Chinese stroke order

Japanese stroke order

Archaic characters

External links

Modern Chinese

Japanese Kanji and Korean Hanja

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