Chinese character strokes

Chinese character strokes (simplified Chinese: 汉字笔画; traditional Chinese: 漢字筆劃; pinyin: hànzì bǐhuà) are the smallest structural units of Chinese characters. When writing a character, the trace of a line or a dot left on the writing surface (such as paper) by the movement from pen-down to pen-up is called a stroke. A stroke may also refer to the movement to write such a trace.^{[1] [2]}

The beginnings and ends of the lines in ancient Chinese characters are often unclear, and it is difficult to count the number of lines. The strokes we use nowadays did not come into being until the appearance of the Clerical script (Template:Zhi), ^{[3] [4]} as illustrated by the historical development of character 馬 (马, horse): ^{[lower-alpha 1]}

Oracle	Bronze	Bigseal	Seal	Clerical	Regular	Simplified

In the following sections, there is an introduction to the number, form, order, combination and distribution of strokes, as well as stroke-based sorting of Chinese characters and words. And an effort is made to make the contents more complementary than repetitive with the other wiki article on strokes, i.e., Stroke (CJK character).

Stroke number

Main page: Social:Stroke number

Stroke number, or stroke count, is the number of strokes of a Chinese character. It plays an important role in Chinese character sorting, teaching and computer information processing. ^[3] Stroke numbers vary dramatically from characters to characters, for example, characters "一" and "乙" have only one stroke, while character "齉" has 36 strokes, and "龘" (three 龍s, dragons) 48. The Chinese character with the most strokes in the entire Unicode character set is "𪚥" (four 龍s) of 64 strokes.^{[5] [6]}

Stroke counting

There are effective methods to count the strokes of a Chinese character correctly. First of all, stroke counting is to be carried out on the standard regular script (Template:Zhi) of the character, and according to its stroke order. And if needed, a standard list of strokes or list of stroke orders issued by the authoritative institution should be consulted.^{[7] [8]}

If two strokes are connected at the endpoints, whether they are separated into two strokes or linked into one stroke can be judged by the following rules: ^[9]

• If the two strokes are connected in the upper left corner of a character or component, then separate them into two strokes, such as: 厂 (stroke order: ㇐㇓), 口 (㇑㇕㇐) and 日 (㇑㇕㇐㇐).
• If they are connected in the upper right corner, then one stroke, such as: 口 (㇑㇕㇐), 月 (㇓㇆㇐㇐), 句 (㇓㇆㇑㇕㇐).
• If they are connected in the lower left corner, then if it is a fully enclosed structure, then count as two separated strokes, such as: 口 (㇑㇕㇐), 回 (㇑㇕㇑㇕㇐㇐), 田 (㇑㇕㇐㇑㇐) ;^{[lower-alpha 2]} if it is not fully enclosed, then count as one stroke, such as: 山 (㇑㇗㇑), 区 (㇐㇓㇔㇗), 葛 (㇐㇑㇑㇑㇕㇐㇐㇓㇆㇓㇔㇗) .^{[lower-alpha 3]}
• If they are connected in the lower right corner, then two strokes, such as: 口 (㇑㇕㇐), 回 (㇑㇕㇑㇕㇐㇐), 田 (㇑㇕㇐㇑㇐).

An important prerequisite for connecting two strokes into one stroke is: the tail of the first stroke is connected with the head of the second stroke.

Distribution of characters

In article Stroke number, there are several tables of statistical data illustrating the distributions of Chinese characters among all stroke numbers of some representative character sets. Here is a brief introduction:

Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters (Template:Zhi) is a standard character set of 4,808 characters issued by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan (ROC). The stroke numbers of characters range from 1 to 32 strokes. The 11-strokes group has the most characters, taking 9.297% of the character set. On the average, there are 12.186 strokes per character.^[8][10]

The List of Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese (Template:Zhi) is a standard character set of 3,500 characters issued by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China.^[11] The stroke numbers of characters range from 1 to 24 strokes. The 9-strokes characters are the most, taking 11.857% of the character set. On the average, there are 9.7409 strokes per character.^[12]

The Unicode Basic CJK Unified Ideographs is an international standard character set issued by ISO and Unicode, the same character set of the China national standard 13000.1. There are 20,902 Chinese characters, including simplified and traditional characters from China, Japan and Korea (CJK).^[13] The stroke numbers of characters range from 1 to 48 strokes. The 12-strokes group has the most characters, taking 9.358% of the character set. On the average, there are 12.845 strokes per character.^[14][12]

Stroke form

Stroke forms (Template:Zhi) are the shapes of strokes. How many types or categories of stroke forms are there in Chinese characters? There are different answers from different classifications. ^[15]

Two categories

The strokes of modern Chinese characters can be divided into plane strokes (平笔) and turning (or bent) strokes (折笔) .^[16] A plane stroke moves in one direction or only curve gently (normally less than 90 degrees). Bent strokes are composed of plane strokes and turning points with sharper bends. They include

1. Bent strokes: ㇕ ㇅ ㇎ ㇡ ㇋ ㇊ ㇍ ㇈ ㇆ ㇇ ㇌ ㇗ ㇞ ㇉ ㄣ ㇙ ㇄ ㇟ ㇚ ㇜ ㇛ ㇢ ㇂.

Plane strokes are also called basic strokes, and bent strokes also called derived strokes (派生笔形) or compound strokes (复合笔形). ^[17]

Five categories

When the six plane strokes of Template:Zhi are classified into four categories by putting "ti" into category "heng", and "na" into "dian", then, together with the bent stroke category, a five-category system is formed: ^[18]

1. Bent strokes: ㇕ ㇅ ㇎ ㇡ ㇋ ㇊ ㇍ ㇈ ㇆ ㇇ ㇌ ㇗ ㇞ ㇉ ㄣ ㇙ ㇄ ㇟ ㇚ ㇜ ㇛ ㇢ ㇂.

Current national standards of PRC such as "Stroke Orders of Commonly-used Standard Chinese Characters" and many reference books published in China mainland adopt the five categories of strokes, and stipulate the heng-shu-pie-dian-zhe (Template:Zhi) stroke group order. This order is consistent with the stroke order of character 札 (zhá, ㇐㇑㇓㇔㇟), and is also called the "札 order".^[7] In Hong Kong, Taiwan and some other places, people also use the group order of dian-heng-shu-pie-zhe (Template:Zhi) ^[19]

The five basic strokes of heng (一), shu (丨), pie (丿), dian (丶), and zhe (𠃍) at the beginning of each group are called main stroke shapes; and the following strokes are called subordinate stroke shapes, or secondary strokes. The name of a category is the name of the main stroke. For example, category "heng" include main stroke "heng" and secondary stroke "ti".

There are disputes over the classification of the vertical hook stroke (亅) among the five types of strokes. In the currently effective national standards, 亅 belongs to category "shu", ^[20] but some language scholars argue that it should be put in the "zhe" (bend) category.^[17]

Eight categories

In this classification, a new category "gou" (钩, hook), which include all the strokes with hooks, is divided out from the original bend category; then, together with the six types of plane strokes, an eight-category system is formed: ^[18] Because the character "永 (yǒng, forever)" happens to contain strokes similar to these eight types of stroke forms, this classification is also called the "Eight Principles of Yong".

CJK strokes

The stroke forms of a standard Chinese character set can be classified into a more detailed stroke table (or stroke list), for instance, the Unicode CJK strokes list has 36 types of strokes:

A stroke table is also called a stroke alphabet, whoes functions in the Chinese writing system is something like the Latin Alphabet in the English writing system.

YES strokes

Another stroke table is the YES Stroke Alphabet, which is used in YES stroke alphabetical order.^[21]

Stroke alphabet

This is a list of 30 strokes:

㇐ ㇕ ㇅ ㇎ ㇡ ㇋ ㇊ ㇍ ㇈ ㇆ ㇇ ㇌ Template:Zhi ㇀ ㇑ ㇗ ㇞ ㇉ ㄣ ㇙ ㇄ ㇟ ㇚ ㇓ ㇜ ㇛ ㇢ ㇔ ㇏ ㇂.

The stroke alphabet is built on the basis of Unicode CJK Strokes^[22] and the Standard of Chinese Character Bending Strokes of the GB13000.1 Character Set.^[23] There are totally 30 strokes, sorted by the standard plane strokes order of “heng (橫, 横, 一), tiao/ti (挑, 提, ㇀), shu (豎, 竖, 丨), pie (撇, 丿), dian (點, 点, 丶), na (捺, ㇏)” and the bending points order of “zhe (折), wan (彎, 弯) and gou (鉤, 钩)”.^[24]

Stroke names

The English name is formed by the initial Pinyin letters of each character in the Chinese name, similar to the naming of CJK strokes in Unicode,^[22] (i.e., H: heng, T: ti/tiao, S: shu, P: pie, D: dian, N: na; z: zhe, w: wan and g: gou).

YES stroke names

Stroke	English name	Chinese name	Example [lower-alpha 4]
㇐	H	横	• 1st stroke of 十 • 1st stroke of 七
㇕	HzS	横折竖	• 2nd stroke of 口
㇅	HzSzH	横折竖折横	• 2nd stroke of 凹
㇎	HzSzHzS	横折竖折横折竖	• 4th stroke of 凸
㇡	HzSzHzSg	横折竖折横折竖钩	• 1st stroke of 乃
㇋	HzSzHzP	横折竖折横折撇 • 5th stroke of 延
㇊	HzSzT	横折竖折提
㇍	HzSwH	横折竖弯横	• 2nd stroke of 朵 • 5th stroke of 投
㇈(乙)	HzSwHg	横折竖弯横钩	• 2nd stroke of 几 • last stroke of 亿
㇆	HzSg	横折竖钩	• 2nd stroke of 同
㇇(乛)	HzP	横折撇	• 1st stroke of 又 • 3rd stroke of 寳
㇌	HzPzPg	横折撇折撇钩	• 1st stroke of 陽 • 9th stroke of 部
	HzNg	横折捺钩	• 1st stroke of 飞 • 2nd stroke of 风
㇀	T	提	• 3rd stroke of 提 • 3th stroke of 堆 • 3th stroke of 江
㇑	S	竖	• 2nd stroke of 十 • 2nd stroke of 五
㇗(㇜)	SzH	竖折横	• 2nd stroke of 山 • 2nd stroke of 车
㇞	SzHzS	竖折横折竖	• 6th stroke of 鼎 • 4th stroke of 吳
㇉	SzHzSg	竖折横折竖钩	• 2nd stroke of 马 • 3rd stroke of 弓
ㄣ	SzHzP	竖折横折撇	• 3rd stroke of 专 • 7th stroke of 奊
㇙	SzT	竖折提	• 3rd stroke of 长 • 1st stroke of 以
㇄	SwH	竖弯横	• 4th stroke of 四 • 5th stroke of 西
㇟	SwHg	竖弯横钩	• 3rd stroke of 己 • 5th stroke of 电
㇚	Sg	竖钩	• 1st stroke of 小 • 2nd stroke of 了
㇓	P	撇	• 1st stroke of 千 • 1st stroke of 人 • 1st stroke of 儿
㇜	PzT	撇折提	• 6th stroke of 私 • 1st and 2nd strokes of 红
㇛	PzD	撇折点	• 1st stroke of 女 • 1st, 2nd and 3rd strokes of 巡
㇢	Pg	撇钩	• 2nd stroke of 犹 • 1st stroke of 乄
㇔	D	点	• 1st and 2nd strokes of 河 • 1st and 2nd strokes of 家
㇏(〇)	N	捺	• 2nd stroke of 人 • last stroke of 边 • 〇, 6th stroke of 㔔
㇂	Ng	捺钩	• 2nd stroke of 戈 • 4th stroke of 成

For more details on stroke forms, stroke naming and stroke tables, please visit sister article Stroke (CJK character).

Stroke order

Main page: Social:Stroke order

The concept of stroke order (Template:Zhi) has two meanings:

1. The direction in which a stroke is written, for example, stroke heng (㇐, horizontal) is written horizontally from left to right, stroke shu (㇑, vertical) is written vertically from top to bottom.
2. The order in which strokes are written one by one to form a Chinese character.

Because the direction of strokes is relatively simple, people generally refer to the latter meaning when talking about stroke order.

The most basic rules of stroke order are:

• First heng (㇐, horizontal) and then shu (㇑, vertical), such as 十, 卄.
• First pie (丿) then na (㇏), such as 乂, 文.
• First up then down, such as 三, 旦.
• First left then right, such as 川, 好.
• First outside and then inside, such as 同, 廣，司.

More examples, the stroke orders of "筆順 笔顺" are

筆: ㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇕㇐㇐㇐㇐㇑
順: ㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇐㇐㇐㇓㇔
笔: ㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇐㇟
顺: ㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇓㇔

The order of strokes is a summary of people's experience in writing Chinese characters correctly and conveniently. It plays an important role in the teaching, sorting and computer information processing of Chinese characters. The stroke order of cursive script (Template:Zhi) is quite flexible and changeable, so the standard of stroke order generally refers to the stroke order of regular script (Template:Zhi).

The currently effective standards for stroke orders in China mainland and Taiwan are "Stroke orders of the commonly used standard Chinese characters" (Template:Zhi) ^[7] and "Template:Zhi (Handbook of the Stroke Orders of the Commonly-Used National Chinese Characters)" .^[8]

Stroke combination

There are three types of combinations between two strokes (Template:Zhi):^[25]

1. Separation: the strokes are separated from each other. Such as: 八, 三, 小.
2. Connection: the strokes are connected, this type can be further divided into two categories:
   1. The end point of one stroke is connected with the body of another stroke
      1. An end of the first stroke is connected to the following stroke's body, such as Template:Zhi (stroke order: ㇓㇟),
      2. The body of the first stroke is connected to an end of the following stroke, such as: 人 (㇓㇏).
   2. Two strokes are connected end to end, including
      1. head-to-head (首首), such as 厂 (stroke order: ㇐㇓),
      2. tail-to-tail (尾尾), such as the first two strokes of 弓 (㇕㇐㇉),
      3. tail-to-head (尾首), such as 了 (㇇㇚). Another example: in character 口 (㇑㇕㇐), the first two strokes are connected head-to-head, the second two tail-to-tail, and the last stroke is connected to the first stroke head-to-tail.
3. Intersection: the strokes are intersected. Such as: 十丈車.

In a Chinese character, multiple stroke combinations are usually used together. Such as: 港.

The same strokes and stroke order may form different Chinese characters or character components due to different combinations. For example, ^[25]

刀力 (stroke order: ㇆㇓), 
由田 (㇑㇕㇐㇑㇐), 
工土士 (㇐㇑㇐), 
八人入乂 (㇓㇏), 
甲曱申叶 (㇑㇕㇐㇐㇑),
己已巳 (㇕㇐㇟).

In other words, stroke combinations have the function of distinguishing Chinese characters.

Stroke distribution

The following tables present some experimental results on the distribution of Chinese character strokes in several dictionaries and character sets. The strokes are summarized in the five categories of "heng (横, 一, horizontal), shu (竖, 丨, vertical), pie (撇, 丿, left-falling), dian (点, 丶, dot) and zhe (折, 𠃍, bent)".

Applicational frequencies

where field Characters includes the numbers of characters containing the strokes of each type, and field Appearances includes the number of appearances of the strokes in each type. The data is from an experiment on the 16,339 traditional and simplified Chinese characters in "Cihai (Template:Zhi)" (1979 edition), sorted in descending order of frequencies of appearance. ^[26]

The data is from an experiment on the 20,902 traditional and simplified Chinese characters in "GB13000.1 character set" (equivalent to the Unicode BMP CJK Chinese character set), sorted in descending order of frequencies of appearance. ^{[14] [10]}

The statistical results above made by different people on different character sets are basically consistent: The most commonly used stroke is "heng" (㇐), followed by "shu" (㇑). The least used is "pie" (㇓). The orders of "dian" (㇔) and "zhe" (㇕) are different (though their frequencies are quite close).

First and last strokes of Chinese characters

where field "Characters started" include the number of characters started by each type of strokes, field "Characters ended" include the numbers of characters ended with the strokes. For example, there are 2,322 characters started with stroke "heng", taking 29.827% of the total number of characters in the dictionary; and there are 2,288 characters ended with "heng", or 29.390% of the total number.

The data of the table is from an experiment on the 7,784 Chinese characters in "Chinese Character Information Dictionary", sorted in descending order of numbers of characters started. ^[27]

The data is from an experiment on the 20,902 traditional and simplified Chinese characters in "GB13000.1 character set" (equivalent to the Unicode BMP CJK Chinese character set), sorted in descending order of number of characters started. ^{[14] [10]}

The above statistical results on the first and last strokes of Chinese characters made by different people on different character sets are consistent. The descending orders of strokes by number of characters started are all "heng, pie, dian, shu, zhe". and the descending orders of strokes by number of characters ended are all "dian, heng, shu, zhe, pie". Some rules can be drawn from here, such as: Stroke "pie" generally does not appear as the last stroke of a character (or component), but more often as the first stroke. Stroke "dian" (including "na" (捺)) appear more often at the end of characters (or components).

Stroke-based sorting

Chinese characters can be sorted into different orders by their strokes. The important stroke-based sorting methods include:

Stroke-count sorting

This method arranges characters according to their numbers of strokes ascendingly. A character with less strokes is put before those of more strokes. For example, the different characters in "Template:Zhi" (Chinese character strokes) are sorted into "汉(5)字(6)画(8)笔(10)[筆(12)畫(12)]漢(14)", where stroke counts are put in brackets. Please note that both 筆 and 畫 are of 12 strokes and their order is not determined by stroke-count sorting. ^[28]

Stroke-order sorting

The characters are firstly arranged by their first strokes according to an order of stroke groups or stroke types (such as “heng (横), shu (竖), pie (撇), dian(点), zhe (折)”, or “dian(点), heng (横), shu (竖), pie (撇), zhe (折)”), then the characters with first strokes belonging to the same group, if any, are sorted by their second strokes in a similar way, and so on. This method is usually employed to support stroke-count sorting to deal with characters of the same stroke number. For instance, 筆(12) starts with stroke ㇓of the pie (撇) group, and 畫(12) starts with ㇕ of the zhe (折) group, and pie is before zhe in groups order, so 筆 goes before 畫. ^[19]

Stroke-count-stroke-order sorting

This is a combination of the previous two methods. Characters are arranged by stroke-count, followed by stroke-order. For example, the different characters in "汉字笔画, 漢字筆劃" (Chinese character strokes) are sorted into "汉(5)字(6)画(8)笔(10)筆(12)畫(12)漢(14)", where each character is put at a unique position.

In China, stroke-based sorting normally refers to stroke-count-stroke-order sorting. The Chinese national standard GB stroke-based sorting is in fact an enhanced stroke-count-stroke-order method ^[14]

YES sorting

YES is a simplified stroke-based sorting method free of stroke counting and grouping, without comprise in accuracy. And it has been successfully applied to the indexing of all the characters in Xinhua Zidian (新华字典) and Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (现代汉语词典). In this joint index you can look up the Pinyin and Unicode of a Chinese character, in addition to its page numbers in the two popular dictionaries.^[21]

See also

• Chinese characters
• Stroke (CJK character)
• CJK Strokes (Unicode block)
• Chinese character components
• Chinese whole characters

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited

External links

• 笔画 ("Strokes" in Wiki Chinese)
• Unicode: CJK Strokes, Range: 31C0–31EF — set of 36 CJK strokes
• The Unicode® Standard Version 15.0 – Core Specification: Appendix F - Documentation of CJK Strokes
• Ministry of Education, R.O.C.: Grouping list of CJK Strokes
• State Language Commission, P.R.C.: Chinese Character Turning Stroke Standard of GB 13000.1 Character Set
• 國字標準字體筆順學習網

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