
Chinese Writing

Learning Highlight
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Start with the foundation of eight basic forms of Chinese strokes.
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Introduce seven rules of Chinese stroke orders.
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Explain the structures of Chinese characters, including single and compound components.
Strokes
Every Chinese character is made up of strokes. It is essential to practice these strokes which help write a Chinese character easier.
Basically, strokes are generally classified into eight basic forms, including
1) diǎn, 2) héng, 3) shù, 4) gōu, 5) tí, 6) piě, 7) zhé and 8) nà.
Stroke Orders
Each stroke of a Chinese character is written according to systematic order rules.
The rules not only ensure the Chinese characters are written in correct orders, but also make us easier to write them.
Basically, we have 7 stroke order rules, including
1) First héng last shù
2) First piě last nà
3) From top to bottom
4) From left to right
5) First outside last inside
6) Outside, inside, then enclosed
7) First center, then left, right
Structures
Structure of Chinese characters can in general be divided into two types, one is the single component and another is the compound.
The Chinese characters which belong to single component type have only one complete and independent component. However, most of the Chinese characters are made up of two or more components.
They belong to the compound component type which has several structural forms for constructing a Chinese character.