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Chinese Characters - Stroke Orders
Write
Chinese characters in the correct order is essential for the
character to look nice and appealing. The very basic rule, when writing
Chinese characters, is to always write from top to bottom, from left to
right.
Just like any
other languages, writing Chinese follow a certain order and direction. The
strokes for each Chinese characters are to be drawn in a certain defined
order as well.
These of Chinese writing symbols rules are
based on practical experience. The fundamental rules - from top to
bottom and from left to right - are easily understandable, since they
are used in most Western writings too. The other rules may need some
practices to grasp.
To better
illustrate the writing chinese characters oders in the following examples, the complete
characters are first shown on a yellow background, and then a sequence
of pictures from left to right, showing how the character is built up,
stroke by stroke, to form the final result.
We also use
different fonts to show you the variety of different styles.
Rule
1: Top down, strokes at the top before those at the bottom
Special case: Left side of squares is drawn
before the top.
Rule 2: Left before right,
strokes to the left before those to the right
Exception: Hook
on the right side comes first.
Rule 3: Horizontal lines and
squares before crossing vertical lines
Exception: Bottom
lines are always drawn last
Rule 4: Frames before
contents, outside and then inside
Note:
The bottom line of a frame is drawn last.
Rule 5: Centre before
symmetrical sides, vertical stroke in the middle before those on both
sides or at the bottom
Rule 6: Secondary dots drawn
last
The above rules give you good guidelines to
follow when writing Chinese characters. We've chosen relatively simple characters
as examples. When the number of strokes increase, the basic rules may
sometimes become inadequate, or there may be more than one correct
stroke orders.
Be sure to learn from the beginning the correct
way to write each different character; otherwise you may repeat the
same mistakes over and over without realizing it, especially when
you'll know hundreds of characters.
But
on the other side, the more characters you learn and become
familiar with, the easier for you to see and understand the written
principle applies to a given character.
Last, here is an
Animated Chinese Character showing how character is written stroke by
stroke as well as its stroke direction.
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