Stroke Order for Chinese Characters
When you were learning to write your name, you were probably taught to write the letters in a certain order and direction. That's because it is more efficient to write western languages from left to right. For similar reasons, the strokes for each Chinese character are to be drawn in a certain defined order.
All Chinese characters builds up from basic strokes. The simplest ones have only one stroke while the more complex ones can have more than 20-30 strokes. To the left you can find some characters and the most common basic strokes in Chinese. The strokes are to be written in the right order and in the right way. It is important to follow those rules. If you always write a character the same way you will after a while have a "feeling" for how to write it. You will feel if you have missed a stroke or if something else is wrong. The character will also look much better if you follow the rules. Proportions are very important so you have to have it in mind when you write. Often a stroke can be altered to look "better" in a character. If you look at the top right corner you find a character with three "dian" on top. The two to the left are written from left to right while the last one is written from right to left. This is made to make the character more beautiful. The same if you have many "heng" in a character like in the second line, second character. There it is three "heng" and they are all in different sizes because it is more beautiful. To be able to write a Chinese character really beautiful you need a brush and ink. If you write with a pencil it is harder to make them look good. Since the proportions is so important it is a good idea to use a Chinese exercise paper when you write. It has small squares in which you write each character.
at first you may need help from a teacher, book, or other learning aid to determine the stroke order for characters you encounter. The more characters you become familiar with, however, the easier it becomes to see which principle applies to a given character.
In short, learning these following seven principles of stroke order
will ultimately save you from having to memorize rules character by character.
