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Stroke Order Research

Stroke order is generally pretty easy. If you know the general rules for stroke order, you'll do fine. But there are a number of characters and radicals for which the stroke order is less clear. There are also a number of competing stroke order standards, and depending which you subscribe to, the stroke order in Skritter may or may not be correct. This page was put together to make our research on the topic of stroke order transparent to anyone interested. We have made a number of compromises and codifications that are unique to Skritter, and they are all documented here.

The document is organized by stroke count, and then by alphabetized pinyin in ascending order. This means that the fewest-stroke radicals and characters come first, and the radicals and characters with the most strokes come towards the end. At the end of this list is a short section of style and questions not strictly related to stroke order but related to the composition and display of characters and radicals. Due to the complexity of some of these characters, we have not adhered strictly to the stroke names, instead falling back on plain english descriptions when necessary.

Standard sources consulted:

• Arch Chinese
• eStroke.com
• MDBG
• Nciku
• The Taiwanese Ministry of Education's website
• Wenlin
• zDict.org
• Zhongwen.com
• 现代汉语通用字笔顺规范, hereafter just "paper dictionary"

Notation

If you are unfamiliar with the stroke naming conventions, look no further than this Wikipedia article on which I have based the descriptions that follow.

Jiu1 (丩) - when a radical in another character:

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the L-shaped stroke comes before the vertical stroke when this is part of a character.

Jiu1 (丩) - when on it's own:

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the L-shaped stroke comes before the vertical stroke when the radical appears on it's own.

Jiu3 (九) radicals:

Conclusion: the sources are unanimous: the cutting stroke should always come first. As such, we don't support other stroke order alternatives.

Li4 (力):

Conclusion: Arch Chinese, eStroke, Taiwanese, and Wenlin all agree that the hooked stroke should come first. Therefore we don't allow any other stroke orders.

Nai3 (乃) radical:

Conclusion: MDBG, Nciku, Arch Chinese, Wenlin, and our paper dictioanry all think that the 4-segment stroke comes first. eStroke, the Taiwanese MOE, and Zhongwen.com all support the single stroke piě coming first. Since this is a simple two-stroke radical, we have made the order interchangeable so that we support both standards.

Men2 radical (门) - first two strokes:

Conclusion: despite initial impressions to the contrary, this radical should only be written in one way: with the dot first.

Nv3 Radical (女)

Conclusion: since there is strict consensus about this, we are changing it from the previous Skritter standard (all three interchangeable) to strictly supporting the above ordering. This is complicated by the different styles in which 女 is written. In some cases, the heng appears to be a part of the wan, in which case we have used a stroke that can be written in one segment or two. For characters that appear to clearly delineate the two strokes, we adhere to the above order.

Qiang2 (丬):

Conclusion: since there is disagreement, we have opted to support both dots or vertical first with a preference for the dots.

Wan2 (丸) radicals:

Conclusion: the sources are unanimous: the cutting stroke should always come first, followed by the hooked stroke, with the dot last. As such, we don't support other stroke order alternatives.

Wan4 (万) and Fang1 (方) radicals - concerning the last two strokes:

Conclusion: After much debate we've decided to support two stroke order variations, with the first suggested stroke order using the piě last.

Xi2 (习) radical:

Conclusion: the result is unanimous, the dots come after the hooked stroke.

Xin1 (忄)

Conclusion: the Taiwanese MoE doesn't explicitly have this character searchable in their dictionary, we have extrapolated the order of this radical from containing characters. The order that we saw was in conflict with the order from the mainland sources and agreement with our previous research. As such, we have decided to keep the central vertical stroke and the dot interchangeable.

Yi4 (义) radical

Conclusion: there's only one dissenting voice for this character (eStroke) and it isn't possible for us to make the dot an optional last stroke without making the entire character stroke order agnostic. As such, we have decided to only support the dominant stroke order for this one.

Che1 (车) radical - last two strokes:

The order of this radical depends on where it appears in a character. Here's the stroke order research for when it appears anywhere but on the left side of a character:

The stroke order changes when the radical appears on the left side of a character like lun2 轮 (wheel):

Conclusion: Arch Chinese disagrees, but we think this is fairly conclusive evidence that the vertical stroke should come before the horizontal.

Ge1 (戈) radicals:

Conclusion: since it's easy to support, we will allow either the diǎn or the piě as the final stroke in the character, although owing to the near-consensus among mainland sources, the stroke order animation will show piě and then diǎn.

Huo3 (火) radicals - regarding the order of the dots:

Conclusion: it's unanimous that the dots should come first. It is worth noting here though that for recognition reasons and to be stylistically more accurate for some traditional characters, we have changed the first dot of fire radicals to become rising strokes instead of the more common falling diǎn strokes.

Pan2 (爿) - 1st and 2nd stroke:

Conclusion: it's unanimous, the L-shaped stroke should come before the vertical.

Wei2 (为) radicals:

Conclusion: the sources are unanimous: wei2 should be written with the top dot first, the cutting stroke second, the two-segment stroke next, and the inner dot last.

Wu3 (五) radical - 2nd and 3rd strokes:

Conclusion: since two sources disagree and the strokes are adjacent, we have made it so these strokes can be written either vertical or horizontal first.

Bi4 (必) radical - last two strokes

Conclusion: the only disagreement here is whether the last dot comes 4th or 5th. Since the Taiwanese MOE is officially endorsed and we can't find a counter example of equal weight for simplified, we have chosen to make the last two strokes of this radical interchangeable.

Ce4 (冊)- last three strokes:

Conclusion: we opted to make all three of these strokes interchangeable. You should be able to write them in any order.

Long2 (龙) radical - 3rd and 4th strokes:

Conclusion: since the disagreement among the sources concerns adjacent strokes, we have chosen to simply make the two stroke interchangeable across Skritter.

Mu3 radical (母) - Last three strokes

Conclusion: since there seems to be considerable confusion, we have decided to make all three interior strokes interchangeable. The animation order will reflect the simple majority view: diǎn, héng, diǎn.

Mao2 (矛) - 4th and 5th strokes

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the hooked stroke comes before the piě stroke.

Tou2 (头)

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, two dots come first.

Ban1 radical (舟) - Last three strokes:

Conclusion: for this one, the Taiwanese MoE is the only dissenting voice, but because it is an authoritative dissenting voice, we will support the last two strokes in any order. The animation will reflect the mainland majority order of héng, followed by diǎn.

Jia1 (夾) - order of the wings:

Hua4 (畫) - strokes 5 and 6:

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the vertical comes before the horizontal stroke.

Yu4 (聿) - strokes 5 and 6:

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the vertical comes after the horizontal stroke.

Qi1 (妻) radical - 4th and 5th strokes:

Conclusion: the sources are unanimous, the horizontal should come before the vertical stroke.

Chang2 (長) - 1st and 2nd strokes:

Conclusion: since this is a traditional radical and the Taiwanese MOE disagrees with the mainland sources, we decided to make the stroke order interchangeable. You should be able to write this in either order.

Chui2 (垂) and zhong4 (重) radicals:

Though visually similar, these two radicals are supported differently in Skritter due to the conflicting information we have gathered from our sources.

Chui2 (垂) is a bit easier to explain. MDBG, Nciku, our paper dictionary, Wenlin, and the Taiwanese MOE all agree on this order. However, the Princeton Chinese Primer and Arch Chinese disagree, preferring this order instead. We feel the basic rules of stroke order support the latter interpretation. We have therefore made either order acceptable. If you find a character that doesn't allow you to write this radical in either way, drop us a line from the study page (and indicate it's a stroke order bug) and George will fix this pronto.

Zhong4 (重) is a little less straight-forward unfortunately. Here is the research we have done regarding the proper order of the last three strokes:

Conclusion: The results suggest that the vertical and horizontal strokes 3rd and 2nd from the end (strokes 7 and 8 in the radical) should be interchangeable. We have implemented this to respect both ways of writing the radical.

Fei1 (非):

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the verticals should be the first and fifth strokes, respectively.

Men2 (門) Radical - First two strokes:

• MDGB, Arch Chinese, Taiwan all agree: shù, héng zhé gōu, héng, héng, etc

Conclusion: since the result is unanimous, we implemented this without alternatives.

Shen4 (甚) - last 3 strokes

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the dots come first.

Fei1 (飛) - last four strokes:

Conclusion: strangely, Wenlin is the only dissenting voice here. Because of Skritter's backend limitations, we can't support both standards without significantly degrading the recognition, so for this one we have made the choice to disregard Wenlin and offer no alternative stroke orders.

Hai4 (害) - 6th and 7th strokes

Conclusion: in this case we chose to disregard eStroke and just support the horizontal and then the vertical. The difference in the Taiwanese order isn't something we can address since we are lacking the font they use.

Traditional Ma3 Radical (馬) - First two strokes

Conclusion: aside from the dissenting voice of the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, this is unanimous. However, since Taiwanese stroke order is more authoritative for traditional characters, we have chosen to allow both orders.

Niao3 radical (鳥) - First two strokes:

Conclusion: since there is no disagreement between sources, this character contains no stroke order exceptions.

Shuang3(爽) - regarding the order of the left radical:

Conclusion: since there is only one dissenter among the sources, we have chosen to opt for the stroke order agreed upon by the other five sources and accept only the horizontal followed by the left radical.

Xu1 (虛) - last 6 strokes:

Conclusion:the result is unanimous, the inside verticals of the radical come first, followed by the wings of the radical, then the bottom horizontal stroke.

Hei1 (黑) - 7th and 8th strokes

Conclusion: since there is substantial disagreement between the sources, we have chosen to make these two strokes interchangeable.

Min3 (黽) - strokes 7, 8, 9, and 10

Conclusion: this seems to be fairly unanimous, we support the potentially L-shaped stroke as two strokes.

Lian2 (聯) - last 3 strokes

Conclusion: since there is some disagreement about this, it is a traditional character, and the disagreement is coming from the Taiwanese MOE, we have decided to make all three of the last strokes interchangeable. If you animate this character, however, you will see the non-Taiwanese order with the héng coming last.

Su4 (肅):

Conclusion: this radical is too complex to try and break down stroke by stroke and there's more than one area of contention according to the research we've done. After consulting MDBG, Arch Chinese, Wenlin, and the Taiwanese MOE, we have decided to stick with the Taiwanese version, which you can view here. We know that it's not terribly democratic to decide on one standard and cling to that in the face of dissenting information. In this case, however, we are limited by our backend and lack of consensus.

Qi2 (齊):

Conclusion: there are two key areas of clarification in this character. Strokes 3-10 and 11-14. For strokes 3-10, even though the above 3-radical rule of Skritter states this should be written left-to-right, Arch Chinese, eStroke, MDBG, the Taiwanese MOE, and Wenlin disagree. Thus, these radicals are written center-left-rigt on Skritter.

For strokes 11-14, we enforce this to be written left-right-center.

Ji1 (機) traditional radical - last two strokes:

Conclusion: since the Taiwanese MOE is more authoritative for traditional characters, we chose to make these two strokes interchangeable instead of simply going with the majority.

Is the first dot in 火 written down and left or up and right?

Although many fonts display this radical top to bottom left-to-right, no unified standard seems to support that style. Additionally, through a quirk of Skritter recognition code, that particular dot doesn't recognize quite a well as the one we are currently using which is top to bottom right to left.

Three-radical-structures (any character with three closely-written radicals)

Conclusion: this rule encompasses quite a few characters. Basically, for the top of a character like 學, this rule governs in what order Skritter expects the top radicals to be written. Having studied a number of these examples, the optimal way to resolve the problem would be to allow for radical interchangeability. The problem is that the Skritter backend wasn't designed in a way that could allow for that level of manipulation. So, for the moment the current rule stands:

If the outside radicals are identical or similar to one another, then the center will be written first. If they are different, however, the order will go left-to-right.

Conclusion: Despite the opposition from Arch Chinese, the more reliable Wenlin and 现代汉语通用字笔顺规范 agree and so we have chosen to keep the stroke order for this radical strictly delineated based upon where in the character it appears.

Box on the left or right? 骨 vs. 咼

For 骨, despite the font, we put the box on the left side, written as a single stroke.

For 咼, we conform to the font and put the box on the right-side of the character written as two strokes.

I thought the right side of 嗟 was supposed to written 羊

Conclusion: technically you are correct, the traditional variant of this character does have a yang randical on the right hand side. We do not support this, however, for two reasons. The first is a technical limitation: there's no unicode point for the trad version of that radical, so even if the character appeared correctly in the Flash, it would confuse people by displaying in simplified form in the prompt. Second, the traditional variant is far less common and is seen by fewer people. We save ourselves time by supporting the most popular standard.

户 vs 戶

It might seem that these two radicals are used interchangeably on Skritter, and up until recently, you would have been correct. We have since done the research to distinguish the two apart and come up with a simple guide for their use. 户 is used in simplified characters, 戶 is used in traditional characters. So, if a character only has one unicode point and that is simplified, we will only represent one version, and vice versa for traditional characters. If you see a character that is incorrectly using this radical, let us know!

Are there 9 or 10 strokes in 鬼?

If you are a traditional character purist, you will notice that there is a discrepancy between how this character is written in traditional and simplified fonts. This is because there is actually an extra stroke in the traditional form of this radical inside the top box. Instead of having one large piě stroke, the traditional has a short shù in the box, a héng, and then a piě. Since there are unicode points for this and the radical is common, we support the difference. If you see a character that you don't think has the right style applied, let us know via the contact form on the study page.