In reality, Chinese characters have hundreds of possible strokes, but they all fall into one of eight simplified categories. Because each of these eight strokes can be found in the character 永 (eternal, perpetually, forever), this is the first character taught in most calligraphy classes. Being able to write this character well shows that a student has mastered all eight strokes, making it the ideal character to begin learning the most basic writing rules.
In practical writing, this character is most often written in only five strokes and has a only five places where the pen (or brush) needs to leave the paper. Therefore, many dictionaries will actually count this as a 5-stroke character. Other have a variety of stroke orders ranging from five to eight. For the purpose of learning to write, let’s just say there are eight strokes in this character even though the boxes below total five-don’t worry, I’ll split up the boxes and make it clear what each of these eight strokes are.
Box One
Dian is the only stroke in this box. This stroke is made from up to down and left to right. It is the shortest of the eight strokes. While often called a “dot”, dian longer than just a simple dot as an English writer would think of it. Dian is also the first two strokes in the three-stroke water radical, shown as the left hand part of the character 汗 (to sweat, perspiration):
Box Two
This box actually contains three different strokes that appear to be one. The first is Heng, which is a nearly diagonal line written from write to left. This stroke is most clearly demonstrated by the numbers 一, 二, 三, or one, two and three. Heng is also the first two strokes of the character 天 (celestial, heaven).
Notice that in the first part of 永 in box two above, the heng stroke is much shorter than in these other example. Usually, heng is a longer stroke as in the four examples above.
Under Construction…more coming soon!
