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Welcome! Today we will explore the beautiful art of writing Chinese characters using simple stroke rules.
Chinese characters, or Hànzì, are not drawn randomly. They are built using a set of basic strokes written in a specific order.
The first rule of stroke order is writing from top to bottom. This keeps your writing balanced and neat on the page.
Another major rule is writing from left to right. When a character has side-by-side parts, you always finish the left side before starting the right.
✏️ Worked example
Analyze how a student would write the character for 'three' (三) using the stroke order rules we just learned.
- Look at the character 三. It consists of three horizontal lines stacked vertically.
- Apply the 'top-to-bottom' rule to decide which line to write first.
- Write the top horizontal line from left to right.
- Move down and write the middle horizontal line, also from left to right.
- Finally, write the longest bottom horizontal line from left to right to complete the character.
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