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Rules for Digitizing Chinese Characters

...and you always thought that there is only one sequence of drawing the strokes of a particular Chinese character? But then, something not in complete order and harmony? Holy Kŏngfūzĭ! Well, please read on.

When contributing digitized Chinese characters to the dragon-char project, we kindly ask you to follow a few simple rules for certain Chinese characters (in particular radicals). These rules help us to maintain a consistent quality (or lack thereof) of the character database and avoid that the learners are not becoming confused due to differing stroke orders for the same radical. We tried to ensure some quality with regard to proper stroke ordering – but since the people behind this project are more or less laymen, please be patient with us and softly tell us where we are barking up the wrong tree. We also tried to make our decisions and the different stroke orders explicit whereever we could find appropriate material. More or less, the very convenient 新华写字字典 [FEI01] has been our main source for deciding which stroke sequence we want to adhere to.

For the interested nitpickers, we have also set up an overview about basic and derived strokes, together with their names as we will use them throughout the digitizing rules.

Radical Table By PīnYīn

Radical Table By KX Numbering

冫: The bīng Radical

The 冫 radical (bīng – ice, cold; rad. no. 15 冰) should be differentiated from the shuĭ radical (water): the ice radical is made up of only two strokes – a diǎn and a tí. In contrast, the water radical consists of three strokes: two diăn and the tí.

Digitizing Rule

When digitizing, write the diăn stroke first. Then write the tí and make sure that you write it in upward direction, as shown in the figure below.

1st stroke:
 2nd stroke:
Animation




辶: The chuò Radical

The 辶 radical (chuò – walking; rad. no. 162 辵) is nowadays written with three strokes. You might sometimes also see the old variant with four strokes, which has two dots one below the other.

Digitizing Rule

When digitizing the chuò, first write the diăn stroke. Next comes a kind-of héng zhé: draw the vertical part straight and do not a southwest-pointing hook at its end. Finish with a sweeping héng stroke. The next figure illustrates this.

1st stroke:
 2nd stroke:
 3rd stroke:
Animation





阝: The fù Radical

The 阝 radical (fù – mound; rad. no. 170 阜) can be either written as two [PCR81, FEI01, LI00, ZHOU96] or three [ASS99, FEI01] strokes. In principle, the first stroke – which looks like a roman 3 – is a combination of a héng piě and a round hook (wān gōu). The fù radical is then finished by a simple shù (but do not try to think about this description for too long, there is more to life than this). The three stroke variant is now (or just currently?) considered to be outdated, at least by [FEI01].

In its form, the fù and the yì radical (no. 193, city, 邑) are the same [MCN99]. When this form appears far right in a character, it is always city and not mound.

Digitizing Rule

For the dragon-char database we decided to stick with the more traditional three-stroke variant. First, digitize the héng piě (horizontal stroke followed by a left falling stroke). Second comes the wān gōu. Finalize with the shù as the third stroke of the radical. Or just look at the illustration below.

1st stroke:
 2nd stroke:
 3rd stroke:
Animation





火: The huŏ Radical

The 火 radical (huŏ – fire; rad. no. 86) can either appear as four dots (灬) in the bottom of a character or in its 火 form. If this latter form appears in the far left position of a character, it is written in a narrow variant. Unfortunately, Unicode 3.0 has no stand-alone character slot allocated to this form, but only has slots for the full-size and the four-dots variants, so we can't display it 100% properly within this running text.

Digitizing Rule

...


1st stroke:

 2nd stroke:
 3rd stroke:
 4th stroke:
Animation






门: The mén Radical

The 门 radical (mén – door; rad. no. 169 门) can be written using two different stroke sequences: either with the diǎn stroke coming first, or with the left shù stroke first. We will here follow the first way [FEI01].

Digitizing Rule

When digitizing, write the diăn stroke first, then the left shù (vertical) stroke, and finally the right héng zhé gōu (turning) stroke – as shown in the figure below.

1st stroke:
top diǎn 		2nd stroke:
left shù 		3rd stroke:
right zhé
Animation





氵: The shuĭ Radical

The 氵 radical (shuĭ – water; rad. no. 85 水) occurs in this particular form we are now talking about only as the left part of a character. It is important to note that the drawing direction of the last, third stroke is different from what you might expect first. Instead of a downward direction, this stroke is written upwards as it is a tí (rising stroke).

Digitizing Rule

First and second, write the diăn strokes as shown below. Third, digitize the tí. Please make sure that you are digitizing the tí in upward direction as shown in the figure below and in the animation.

1st stroke:
top diǎn 		2nd stroke:
middle diǎn 		3rd stroke:
Animation




忄: The xīn Radical

In principle, there are at least two different stroke sequence orders for the 忄 radical (xīn – heart; rad. no. 61 心). Either you can write the shù first, then followed by the two diăn strokes to its left and right [ASS99]. Or you start with the left and right diăn strokes first and only then complete the radical with the middle shù stroke [PCR81, FEI01, LI00]. My Chinese students even add a third variant, where the strokes are simply written left-to-right in the form of left diăn, middle shù, and finally right diăn (kind of who cares attitude).

Digitizing Rule

When digitizing, first digitize the left diăn, then the right diăn, and finally the shù stroke in the middle of the xīn radical. This is also shown below.

1st stroke:
left diǎn 		2nd stroke:
right diǎn		 3rd stroke:
shù
Animation




阝: The yì Radical

The 阝 radical (yì – city; rad. no. 163 邑) looks similiar in form to the fù radical (mound; rad. no. 170 阜). However, the fù radical always appears in the far right of a character.

Unfortunately, Unicode 3.0 has no separate character code slot for the yì radical, so that is the reason why it looks on this page like the fù radical.

Digitizing Rule

Please refer to the fù radical for concise information about digitizing this particular radical.

Literature

For the real Chinese writer, the following literature references might be rather unauthoritative, but it's the kind of material many beginners will start with. And since it is especially in case of [PCR81, FEI01, LI00] rather kind of semi-official, we are referencing it here.

[PCR81]
Practical Chinese Reader. Beijing Language Institute, Commercial Press, Beijing, 1981, 7-100-00088-2.
[LI00]
LI Pei-Yuan et al.: Flash Cards for Elementary Chinese – 1375 Basic Chinese Characters Cards. Sinolingua, Beijing, 2000, 7-80052-090-0.
[ZHOU96]
Zhou Jian, Patrick Lin, and Lu Ching Chou: 500 Basic Chinese Characters – A Speady Elementary Course. Sinolingua, Beijing, 1996, 7-80052-460-4.
[ASS99]
Assimil: Ecriture Chinoise – Chinese Writing. Assimil, 1994, 0-8288-4383-X.
[MCN99]
William McNaughton and Li Ying: Reading and Writing Chinese: A Guide to the Chinese Writing System. Charles E Tuttle, 1999, 0-8048-3206-4.
[FEI01]
FEI Jin Chang: Xinhua Xiezi Zidian Character Writing Dictionary (新华写字字典). Commercial Press Beijing, 2001, 7-100-03247-4

Misc

The graphics for the strokes and stroke animation were made with The Gimp. The font used in these graphics for the Chinese characters is Sim Hei (not that would be the nicest one, but it closely resembles the calligraphic personality of the dragon character training software). Mozilla's Composer tool helped us to create this HTML mess, which is still way superior to MSFrustPage. Beware, this page has been created by an engineer.