Stroke order

Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface.

Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. ==Basic principles== Chinese characters are logograms constructed with strokes. Over the millennia a set of generally agreed rules have been developed by custom. Minor variations exist between countries, but the basic principles remain the same, namely that writing characters should be economical, with the fewest hand movements to write the most strokes possible. This promotes writing speed, accuracy, and readability. This idea is particularly important since as learners progress, characters often get more complex. Since stroke order also aids learning and memorization, students are often taught about it from a very early age in schools and encouraged to follow them. The Eight Principles of Yong uses the single character ('eternity') to teach eight of the most basic strokes in regular script. ===Ancient China=== In ancient China, the oracle bone script carved on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons showed no indication of stroke order. 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 re-carved, and the stroke order of these characters tends to resemble traditional and modern stroke order. 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. ===Imperial China=== In early Imperial China, the common script was the small seal script. About 220 BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first to conquer all of China, imposed Li Si's character consolidation, a set of 3300 standardized small seal characters. Its graphs on old steles—some dating from 200 BC—reveal indications of the stroke order of the time. 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 clerical script which is more regularized, and in some ways similar to modern text. By looking at the clerical style steles' graphs and the placement of each stroke, one can see hierarchical priority between the strokes, which indicates the stroke order used by the calligrapher or stele sculptors. Regular script is the most recent major script style, allowing one to more easily guess the stroke order used to write on the steles. The stroke order 1000 years ago was similar to that toward the end of Imperial China. For example, the stroke order of 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 and current shapes have tiny differences, while current stroke order is still the same, according to the old style. However, the stroke orders implied by the Kangxi dictionary are not necessarily similar to nowadays' norm. ===Cursive styles and hand-written styles=== Cursive and semi-cursive script show stroke order more clearly than Regular Script, as each move made by the writing tool is visible. File:門-order.gif|Traditional , traditional stroke order. File:門-aorder.gif|Traditional , PRC stroke order. File:门-jorder.gif|Simplified , traditional stroke order, comes from cursive script. File:门-order.gif|Simplified , PRC stroke order. 2. Horizontal before vertical When horizontal and vertical strokes cross, horizontal strokes are usually written before vertical strokes: the character for "ten", , has two strokes. The horizontal stroke, , is written first, followed by the vertical stroke, to obtain . Similarly, when a horizontal stroke is crossed by a right-to-left diagonal (丿), the horizontal stroke is written first, e.g., the first stroke of 大 is 一, followed by 丿. In the Japanese standard, a vertical stroke may precede many intersecting horizontal strokes if the vertical stroke does not pass through the lowest horizontal stroke. 3. Character-spanning strokes last Vertical strokes that pass through many other strokes are written after the strokes through which they pass, as in and . Horizontal strokes that pass through many other strokes are written last, as in and . 4. Diagonals right-to-left before diagonals left-to-right Right-to-left diagonals ( ) are written before left-to-right diagonals ( ), as in . This is for symmetric diagonals; for asymmetric diagonals, as in , the left-to-right may precede the right-to-left, based on other rules. 5. Center before outside in vertically symmetrical characters In vertically symmetrical characters, the center components are written before components on the left or right. Components on the left are written before components on the right, as in and . 6. Enclosures before contents Outside enclosing components are written before inside components; bottom strokes in the enclosure are written last if present, as in and . (A common mnemonic is "Put people inside first, then close the door.") Enclosures may also have no bottom stroke, as in and . 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): and . 8. Bottom enclosures last Bottom enclosing components are usually written last: , , . 9. Dots and minor strokes last Minor strokes are usually written last, as the small "dot" in the following: , , . 10. Vertical before diagonal lower-left-to-right A vertical is written before a crossing diagonal lower-left-to-right stroke (㇀, ti), such as: 物, 软, 打. ==See also== Chinese characters description languages Stroke Orders of the Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters Stroke Order Standard of GB 13000.1 Character Set Stroke orders of CJK Unified Ideographs (YES order) ==Notes== ==References== Traditional stroke order ROC stroke order (Authoritative) PRC stroke order (Authoritative) Japanese (Authoritative from 1958 to 1977). Hadamitzky, Wolfgang & Mark Spahn. A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System. Charles E. Tuttle Co. . Henshall, Kenneth G. A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Charles E. Tuttle Co. . O'Neill, P.G. Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged for Learning and Reference. Weatherhill. . Includes a translation of the Japanese Ministry of Education rules on Kanji stroke order. Hong Kong . Online version available at http://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_ch/. (Print version is official curriculum supporting material.) Archaic characters Other issues ==External links== PRC Animated stroke order, from the California State University, Long Beach LearnchineseOK.com Web resources, instructions and animations for Chinese character stroke order Animated stroke order for Chinese characters Stroke Order tool with option to see many characters' stroke order at once. ROC Learning Program for Stroke Order of Frequently Used Chinese Characters (常用國字標準字體筆順學習網) with animated stroke order, by the Ministry of Education, R.O.C. (Taiwan). Hong Kong 中英對照香港學校中文學習基礎字詞 - Lexical Items with English Explanations for Fundamental Chinese Learning in Hong Kong Schools, by the Hong Kong Education Bureau 香港標準字形及筆順 - stroke orders following the Hong Kong Education Bureau's List of Commonly Used Characters Japanese Kanji Stroke Order, from the Engineering Department of New Mexico Tech, Socorro. Kanji alive, a free web application for learning Japanese kanji with stroke order animations. SODER Project, 1,513 Japanese kanji stroke order diagrams and animations, freely downloadable under license. Kakijun Kanji stroke order animations. Kanji stroke order font, Japanese kanji stroke order diagrams presented as a TrueType font. Kanji Kakijun navi Japanese kanji stroke order. Korean 한자사전(漢字辭典) with stroke order diagrams

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