How to be a Master in Chinese character stroke order?

When it comes to writing Mandarin stroke order is surprisingly vital. The Chinese take huge pride in their language that includes the complex Chinese writing system.

I remember my Mandarin teacher cringing every time I utilized the improper Mandarin stroke order for a character and screaming “倒插笔 (dào chā bǐ)” in my ear. The single meaning of this phrase “倒插笔” is to criticize somebody for using the wrong stroke order.

Other phrases often heard in elementary classes are “乱写! (luàn xiě)” or writing madly and “写错了! (xiě cuò le)” that is “You wrote in incorrect!”

So, why is Mandarin stroke order is so important?

First, let’s discuss a slightly about strokes themselves. As you might know, 10 basic stroke orders comprise every Chinese character.

Using the incorrect stroke order or direction would lead the ink to fall differently on the page. You can easily understand that the “捺 (nà)” stroke order has started thin, but the thickness and thins out again in a neat sweep. Should you write backward, you wouldn’t have a similar effect, do not believe me?

Try to write the letter “S” pm a piece of paper. Try recreating it, but begin from the bottom instead. 

Do you see how you misplace some of that natural flow?

The mandarin has forever believed in balance as well as harmony. For instance, when 1 fell ill, she or he was thought to have an imbalance of yang and yin in her or his body system. Conventional Mandarin medicine was produced to restore proper balance.

In the same way, the Chinese character stroke order system was made to produce the most aesthetical symmetrical and well-balanced character on a piece of paper. Moreover, it was also made to be effective – creating the most stroke orders with the least amount of hand movement across the page. 

You might notice that every character fits supremely into a square box. None of them skew dramatically to 1 side or the other that again reflects how much we worth symmetry and balance.

“永 (yǒng)” the mandarin character for eternity, is often the poster child character for calligraphers. If you determine this closely, you’ll notice that this 1 character has eight of the most common stroke order types that appear in the mandarin writing system. This is why calligraphers are usually judged on skill by how nicely they write the character 永.

When kids are learning to write at a young age, Mandarin stroke order is often taught to them using the 8 principles of Yong, which are the eight different strokes combined in this 1 character. Continuous practice of this character can enhance basic handwriting.

Even in the present technological age, understanding the paper stroke order can go a long way to assisting you to master Mandarin. Several Chinese input methods and dictionaries have handwriting feature that needs the right stroke order to understand the character.

Understanding Mandarin stroke orders will also assist you to understand “草书 (cǎo shū)” or Mandarin cursive writing. My knowledge of Chinese stroke order has helped me decipher messy mandarin handwriting on more than sole occasion.

Rules of Chinese Character Stroke Order 

I highly recommended you read via these principles a couple of times, and see how much you can memorize. But then, only start writing. You can utilize workbooks or just write anything you can find easily!

The more you write, the more these principles would become part of your memory. 

Write from left to right – Most of the Chinese character strokes are written from left to right. For instance, the character 你 begins with the leftmost vertical Chinese strokes before moving on to the strokes in the right direction.

Horizontal before vertical – When character stokes cross each other, horizontal character stokers are normally written before vertical strokes. For instance, for the mandarin character 十, the horizontal character stroke is written before the vertical stroke.

Right to left diagonals before left to right diagonals – For instance, for the Mandarin character 人, for the Chinese character the right to left diagonal stroke is written before the left to right diagonal.

Top to bottom – As an instance, the character 二 (2), starts with the top character stroke, and ends with the bottom stroke order.

Outside before inside - Outside enclosing character stroke orders are written before inside strokes, for instance in the character 同.

This principle applies to the Chinese character with –

• Surround from Up lest formation (for instance 危, 友, 发)
• Surround from the upright formation ( 乌, 可, 包, 乃)
• Surround from the above formation (冈, 闭, 凤, 问)

Inside before outside – Sometimes principle No.5 is reserved, in the case of Mandarin character with surround from Below formation ( 凶) with surround from lower to left formation ( 达).

Inside before bottom enclosed – When there’s bottom character stoke, it is written last.  For an instance, for the Chinese character 因, the exterior enclosing character strokes are written first, followed by the inside component 大 and lastly the bottom horizontal character stoke.

For instance -四

Center Verticals before outside wings – if there’s a center vertical Chinese stroke flanked by strokes in either direction, the center vertical is drawn first. For example, in the Chinese character 小, the center character stoke comes before the 2 strokes to the way.

For instance -水

Cutting character stroke last – Vertical character strokes that cut via character are written after the horizontal character stokers they cut through. For instance, in 千, you start with the horizontal character strokes before the vertical.

Left vertical character stroke before enclosing – Left strokes are written before enclosing character strokes. For instance, in the character 口, the leftmost vertical character stroke (丨) is written first, followed by the uppermost as well as rightmost lines (┐) (that are written as 1 stroke).

For instance -日

Do you’ve to learn character stroke order for each mandarin character you learn?

Yes and No!

Yes, you’ve to care about character stroke order when you write mandarin characters, but no you do not need to learn it separately for every character. After a while, the character stroke order will feel natural and once you have learned a few hundred Chinese characters, you would not have to spend time learning the strokes of most mandarin characters you encounter.

Sure, there’ll be exceptions, but not that many! And if you end up writing a rare component wrongly, few people will care. 

But why do you need to learn Chinese character stroke order?

Cannot you just write mandarin characters any way you want and just not care about what a few publications say?

You can, but the common consensus among people who teach mandarin is that you’d care. We do not say this to make your life difficult, we say it because we think it is the simplest way in the long run.

Not convenience yet? Read on!

Mandarin Characters are simple to write when you use correct stroke order 

As we’ve seen, character stroke order exists because it is practical. The standard character stroke order reflects the most effective way of writing. Sometimes, this does not feel right for beginners, but you’ve to take into account that the few mandarin characters you’ve written are not essentially a representative example of the written language.

In other meaning, some principles make sense when used to the language as a whole, not necessarily in every single case. Moreover, while you might opt for a different way of writing a Chinese character as a beginner, you might simply be wrong. That feeling is based on a restricted experience of writing mandarin characters, so would not it make more sense to trust the trillions of hours Mandarin people have spent writing their language? I think it does!

Moreover, we have character stroke order principles in English too, for a similar reason. You do not write a letter “l” from top to bottom-up, do you? Some people cross their “t” from right to lest direction. Though not every single case might make sense, in a general way, stroke order principles still make writing by hand easier.

Mandarin Characters written with the incorrect stroke order do not look the same 

It might amaze you that an experienced mandarin teacher can see if you use the right stroke order or not based on the written assignment, even if she or she doesn’t observe you when you write. The main reason is that even if you might consider that the outcome is similar no matter what character order you write the strokes, this not true!

Sure, if you write every single stroke carefully and slowly, you’d arrive at a similar end outcome, but the whole point of strokes order is to let for quick and perfect writing. One day, you’ll want to write faster, and that means `that character strokes will occasionally be joined jointly. if you join character stokes the way native Chinese speakers do, your writing will start to approach that of a native speaker, nobody will find it hard to read.

But if you make up your own, and start joining strokes that no native Chinese speaker would, people will struggle to decipher your characters.

Learning right stroke order makes it simple to understand other people’s handwriting

Learning to read other people’s handwriting in mandarin is not simple.

If you do not know about stroke order, it’ll be hard to examine which strokes are joined together when native mandarin speakers write. While you can get away with little handwriting in modern, virtual society, avoiding other people’s handwriting is way harder.

Naturally, understanding character stoker order is not enough to read handwritten Chinese, but it’s one of the essential steps, if you want to learn more about learning to read handwritten Chinese check out CCHATTY.

Using the right character stoke order makes it simple to look up mandarin characters you do not understand 

If you want to look up a handwritten or printed mandarin character you do not know, the fastest way to use handwriting recognition on your PC or phone. Once your mobile phone, just adds mandarin language input and ensure to enable handwriting. You also use CCHATTY Chinese dictionary. 

When you wrote on the screen, your PC or mobile phone will try to decide which Chinese character you most likely intended to write. It’ll use different information for this, but character stoker order is a vital one. If you write an easy Chinese character with the incorrect stroke order, or even the worst one, with the incorrect number or stoke orders, it’ll often fail.

Though, if you write the correct number of stroke orders in the right way, it’ll often succeed, even if the character is fully unreadable for anyone. Check this instance of the traditional Chinese character 龍 lóng “dragon.

A human would struggle to read this, but the dictionary still guessed it perfectly, because the character stokers order was correct. 

There is no good alternative to using right stroke order when writing mandarin characters 

Let’s seem at an alternative to adhering to the right stroke order that’d be improving stroke order or inventing your principles. There’s no long-term benefit in doing this.

Though you think that your version is way better, that assessment is based on your limited knowledge of mandarin. Are you sure you’ll still think it is better after writing Chinese characters for a year?

Creating a constant system on your own will be difficult in itself, so if you are going to write with a consistent character stroke order, why not get it correct from the beginning?

The main reason you want to write Chinese characters the similar way each time is of course that muscle memory matters! The more you write, the more likely it’s that you’ll keep in mind how to write it without thinking very much about it.

Naturally, this is not forever enough, but it helps. If you are going to write longer by hand, this is a must.