There was a small piece in one of the Qingdao newspapers the other day about Chinese characters that are commonly written with incorrect stroke orders. I can’t remember which paper now, unfortunately, but I’ve listed the characters and their correct stroke orders here.
The article was aimed at Chinese readers, not foreign learners, so it was interesting to see what native speakers consider correct and incorrect.
1. 方 (fāng)
How most people write it:
How it should be written:
Yep, that ㇆ stroke comes before the 丿. The 丿stroke is called 撇 (‘slant’), and the ㇆ stroke is called 横折钩 (‘right angle hook’). The right angle hook should be written before the slant, despite most people doing it the other way round.
2. 万 (wàn)
It actually stems from the way in which 万 should be written. Characters with this as a component are frequently written in the wrong order:
Again, you should write the ㇆ before the 丿, like this:
Why? I don’t know, but that’s the stroke order that character nerds will give you. I’m tempted to think that this is somewhat equivalent of the split infinitives rule in English (a ridiculous rule that a lot of people promote without any good reason).
3. 火 (huǒ)
I was actually writing this one correctly before I saw the article (thanks to Skritter, I think), but apparently a lot of people write 火 in this order:
The correct order is in fact:
The strokes in 火 are 丶 ㇒ 丿㇏, called 点, 提, 竖撇 and 捺 respectively. They should be written in that order as well!
4. 车 (chē)
There seems to be some debate about the correct stroke order for 车, but according to the newspaper article you don’t write it like this:
The correct order is in fact:
The article also pointed out another common mistake involving 车. Play spot the difference with these two versions of 轻:
When 车 appears as a radical in other characters (e.g. 转, 较, 载), the final 一 stroke actually turns into a ㇀. As far as I know this upward slant is purely aesthetic, and just helps to balance the character; you might be able to improve your handwriting a little if you pay attention to this!
5. 里 (lǐ)
This one really surprised me, and I still can’t get used to it. I always thought that 里 was written in this order:
You’re actually supposed to write 甲 first then just add two lines, like this:
It’s 丨㇕一一丨一一, not 丨㇕一一一丨一.
6. 快 (kuài)
Another one that I didn’t know, although this one does seem natural with the correct stroke order. Previously I’d been writing 快 like this:
The 忄 radical is actually written in a different order:
This applies to any character containing the 忄 radical, of course: 情, 性, 怀 etc. The order is ㇒丶丨㇕一丿㇏, not ㇒丨丶㇕一㇓㇏.
7. 母 (mǔ)
This one isn’t so much stroke order as the number of strokes. Apparently some people write 母 like this, although I’ve never seen anyone do it:
There’s one more stroke than there should be. The first stroke of 母 is actually ㇄, making five strokes in total:
8. 及 (jí)
This one is a common variant, but strictly speaking it’s wrong:
You’re supposed to write the 丿 stroke first, like this:
So the correct order is 丿㇋㇏. The same thing applies for similar looking characters, like 九, which should be 丿 then ㇈.
9. 义 (yì)
There are definitely a lot of people that write 义 in the ‘wrong’ order, as the technically correct one does seem a little strange. First up, the incorrect stroke order:
It’s actually supposed to be written like this, though:
The dot (丶) should be written first, followed by the criss-crossing strokes.
10. 爽 (shuǎng)
And finally, a slightly less common character that often gets written in the wrong order. It’s tempting to write 爽 like this:
(I’ve grouped the repeated ㇒丶 strokes together to keep it clear.) Even nciku gives this stroke order. But according to the newspaper article, 爽 should actually be written like this:
This stroke order is more consistent with that of traditional 來, for example, and is the one used on Skritter. This is obviously a highly debatable topic, though, as no-one really has the authority to say which stroke order is wrong and which is right.
Did you already have all these pinned down, or were there some surprises? Do you disagree with the ‘correct’ stroke orders given here? Please share all in the comments!
If you found this useful, consider helping me out in return.
Interesting post! I write these ones with the wrong order: 车，里 and 及 (I haven’t really used 爽 so can’t say about that). I’ve reacently learned that I write 车 incorrectly, thanks to Skritter, but still haven’t managed to change the old habit.
I guess all it takes is to write these characters with the right order many times until it becomes natural. The order for 里 is really wierd though.
Yea, 里 is the weirdest one for me as well. I’m not sure how much value there is in relearning them if you already write them consistently, though. I think the only advantage of learning stroke order is to help you remember how to write a character. It’s the consistency that’s important, not ‘correctness’.
Oh dear. Nine out of ten wrong. My only saving grace: I’ve ALWAYS written 母 with only five strokes. Woo-hoo!
Well, as I said above, I think what matters here is that you’re consistent, not that you adhere to rules someone else made.
I’ve long been under the impression that one learns to write characters in the correct order in order to produce characters that ultimately ‘look’ as they should do. As you say, I’m not sure this is technically true. It’s possible to produce a perfect looking final character in any number of ways. However, it does perhaps impact the speed one can write and the fluency in joining the constituent ‘bits’ of each character.
More broadly, though, there is something deeply rooted in the China’s educational culture which emphasises correct and incorrect methods. This need not be totally inhibiting (though often is, I admit); one of my favourite Sinologists, Simon Leys, has written beautifully about the freedom that can emerge within the restraints of Chinese aesthetic forms – caligraphy, poetry and painting. However, the strict adherence to formal process seems to be key to this working.
Not that any of this is gonna change the way I write the above characters:) I think I’m way too set in my ways…
Interesting post! Let’s see, I write 火, 及, 义, 母, and 爽 “correctly”. I have seen the “correct” way for 方, 万, 车 and 快, tried it for a while and then ignored it figuring it would be too hard and not worth it to break my bad habits. Like you and Sara, 里 was a shock to me. That one just feels wrong.
I remember when I was learning Chinese in Taiwan, I would ask some friends how to write a specific character, thinking it was an easy question, and often it would lead to disagreements and arguments among themselves. Like most things in Chinese, even native speakers have a hard time getting it right all the time.
Maybe one day I will learn to write every character the “correct” way, but I agree with you that as long as I am consistent, that is probably good enough for now.
Of course, what is “correct” depends on which country you’re talking about. For example, in Taiwan it’s “correct” to write 里 in exactly the way you’ve listed as incorrect (although in this case, the Mainland standard is more correct historically). The MOE or equivalent in each country which uses 漢字 has the authority, of course, to say what is “correct”, or to be more precise in my word choice, what is “standard”.
There’s quite a difference there. “Correct” or “orthodox” refers to how characters were most often written by the best calligraphers in history (mostly 唐朝 calligraphers). And the orthodox stroke order will differ based on whether the character is written in 楷書, 行書, or 草書. Usually the form used in the 康熙字典 will be the orthodox 楷書 form. “Standard” refers to what each government prescribes as the “official” way to write the character. The two are never the same, unfortunately.
In fact, the country whose standard is most often correct is Japan, 新字体 notwithstanding. The country whose standard is least often correct is China. Taiwan is somewhere in between, despite the fact that many Taiwanese claim that “It’s not 繁體字 (complex-form characters), it’s 正體字 (correct/orthodox-form characters)!” Well, many of the characters are orthodox, but some are 俗體字, so no, by definition they’re not 正體字. Although I agree with them that 繁體字 needs to be replaced by a better term.
And of course, I’ve always thought it a little laughable that the government which created the monstrosity that is the simplified character system (殘體字 as I like to call them) would presume to even talk about “correct” stroke order in the first place.
Anyway, I try to always write using the orthodox 楷書 stroke order. It most certainly is important, contrary to some of the comments above. I’m always surprised and amused (and maybe a little irritated) when learners brush something like stroke order off as something not worth paying attention to. It’s like the people who say you don’t have to worry about tones, only to discover further down the road that people refuse to speak to you in Chinese because they can’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Anyway, when your handwriting develops into a more cursive style (which it should — you wouldn’t want to write like a 5 year-old forever, would you?), people will have difficulty reading what you write unless you follow correct stroke order. 行書 order is based on 楷書, so you need a good foundation in 楷書 first. 草書 is its own thing, but not very many people write in full-on 草書 anyway.
OK, long comment over!
Are you positive about the stroke order for 方 in mainland china? We are cross referencing a few sources around the office and the ‘incorrect’ way seems to be right. Thanks for the great article, just found 2 incorrectly writen hanzi in our application!
Well I certainly don’t have the authority to say which is correct, but here are some sources for the order shown here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E6%96%B9-torder.gif
http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%96%B9/1304029
http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/41830551.html
http://www.51240.com/e696b9__bihuachaxun/
Our teacher, who’s a professor at 中国海洋大学 and is from mainland China, also confirmed this order.
Hugh,
thank you for your reply! We are just a little confused because some of our sources (including http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%B9 http://www.chinese-tools.com/learn/characters/character/26041.html http://www.visualmandarin.com/tools/dictionary/;jsessionid=FEAE328C436780C3BF8017B83524787D) list the first way as right or show the second 方 stroke order as being specific to taiwan. Once again thank you for the great article, it has really opened my eyes to this problem of disputed stroke order that I had not really thought about before!
I always thought an important reason for modern Chinese speakers to know the correct stroke order was for using smartphones and tablets. The sofware that recognizes the character you wrote with your fingertip (such as for texting) uses the stroke order to identify the character.
So I guess you would either need to know stroke order or pinyin…
I think the algorithms make use of that, but the good ones can certainly get it right even if the stroke order is completely wrong. I know that MDBG’s relies on stroke order and will fail if this is wrong, but nciku’s and Pleco’s can even cope with characters being written in reverse order.