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Stroke order Chinese: 筆順 bǐshùn; Template:Lang-ja hitsujun or 書き順 kaki-jun; Template:Lang-ko "pilsun" or 획순 畫順 "hoeksun") refers to the correct order in which the stroke of a Chinese character is written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument. 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. While these languages all utilize a common set of characters, the rules governing stroke order are different 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. 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. The basic rules of stroke order within each language, however, remained the same.
Development of rules
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 cursive Grass Script style of calligraphy.
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, particularly in styles such as Grass Script, in which individual strokes are often combined in fluid motions without lifting the brush from the paper.
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.
Which stroke order for each style
       Source |
Ancient China
In ancient China, the Jiǎgǔwén characters 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 discernable 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. 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 BC, and in Xiaozhuan style — start to reveal tiny indications of the stroke order of the time.
About 220 BC, 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. 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. 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. 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 and current shapes have tiny differences, while current stroke order is still the same, according to old style.
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. 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.
Three national schools of stroke order
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.
- Traditional stroke order: Imperial China, ROC in China from 1911 to 1949, modern Taiwan and Hong Kong. This system of stroke order follows the rules of traditional Chinese and Chinese Grass Style calligraphy.
- 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 of some characters. A notable "innovation" of this stroke order reform was the conception of a "horizontal writing" stroke order, to facilitate horizontal writing.
| 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 of stroke order
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:
, 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.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
- Chinese character
- East Asian calligraphy
- CJK strokes
- Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
Notes
- Charactères Chinois, by Edoardo Fazzioli, ISBN2-08-112004-6. Page 14 : "Ainsi naiquit le premier dictionnaire chinois, le San1 Cang1, avec ses 3.300 caractères." ~ "This is the way which produce the first ever Chinese dictionary, the San1 Cang1, with his 3.300 characters."
- 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
- 常用國字標準字體筆順手冊 by the Taiwan Ministry of Education. Book available online (authoritative work). ISBN 957-00-7082-X
- Japanese stroke order
- 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.
- 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. ISBN 0-8934-6232-2.
- Includes a translation of the Japanese Ministry of Education rules on Kanji stroke order.
- Archaic characters
- 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
External links
Modern Chinese
- Text page Overviewing of Chinese stroke, stroke order, and radicals
- Animated stroke order, from the California State University, Long Beach
- Nice flash - unknown number of animations.
- cchar.com Online query of stroke order animations.
Japanese Kanji and Korean Hanja
- Mechanical Rules to write Kanji, from the Engineering Department of New Mexico Tech, Socorro.
- Saiga Japanese Kanji Dictionary, 3205 Kanji with stroke order.
- Kanji alive, a free interactive online tool for learning Japanese kanji, featuring 1235 hand-written stroke order animations.
- SODER Project, one thousand Japanese kanji stroke order diagrams, freely downloadable.
- hanja.naver.com - 한자사전(漢字辭典) (gif, in Korean)