Stroke order
(Redirected from Stroke (Chinese character))
Categories: Chinese language | Japanese language | Kanji | Japanese writing system | Korean language
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 were originally carved; the earliest extant examples are on the so-called oracle bones, scapulomancy fortune-telling devices on which the diviner inscribed his name, the date, and two possible outcomes (see image). Carving gradually gave way to writing on bamboo, silk and finally paper, using brushes and ink.
Although it would take thousands of 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.
Contents |
Development of stroke order 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 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) uses the single character 永, meaning "eternity", to teach the eight most basic strokes.
Stroke order 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 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 first, usually when the bottom-most stroke is horizontal, such as in 田 or 王.
5. Cutting strokes last
Vertical strokes that "cut" through a character are written last, 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.
Image:火-bw.png.
Types of strokes
There are some 30 distinct types of strokes recognized in Chinese characters, some of them compound strokes. Many of these have no agreed-upon name. Some common strokes include:
- Horizontal stroke 一
- Vertical stroke 丨
- Left diagonal stroke 乀
- Right diagonal stroke ノ
- "Dot" ｀
- "Left uptick" 亅
- "Right uptick"
See also
- Chinese characters
- Kanji: Chinese characters used in Japanese.
- Yokogaki and tategaki explains the vertical and horizontal systems of Japanese writing.
- Japanese calligraphy
- Chinese calligraphy
- Korean calligraphy
References
- Hadamitzky, Wolfgang & Mark Spahn. A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System. Charles E. Tuttle Co. ISBN: 0804820775.
- Henshall, Kenneth G. A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Charles E. Tuttle Co. ISBN: 0804820384.
- O'Neill, P.G. Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged for Learning and Reference. Weatherhill. ISBN: 0834802228.
- 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.zh:笔顺