Writing Chinese Characters
The complexity of Chinese characters, as well as the vast differences between this form of writing and Western alphabets, can be off-putting to someone wanting to learn Chinese. However, once students have mastered the basic order in which strokes are made within characters, they are well on their way to becoming fluent writers of Chinese. When learning to write Chinese characters, stick to the correct stroke order and stroke count. Many dictionaries use stroke count to index Chinese characters, making a knowledge of the different stroke counts of characters imperative.
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Instructions
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Place your pen on the right-hand side of the page, in the top corner. Chinese writing goes from right to left.
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Make a dot if the character includes one. The dot should ''flick'' rightward, so move your pen sharply to the right when making the dot.
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Make the first horizontal stroke, beginning with the top stroke. Horizontal strokes are made from left to right. All the horizontal strokes should be made before the vertical strokes. If your symbol has a baseline, leave that until last.
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Make the first vertical stroke, beginning with the farthest stroke to the left. Make vertical strokes from left to right until they are complete.
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Add any small details, such as short, curved lines, working from left to right, beginning with the top left-hand corner and finishing in the bottom right.
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Add lines to close any boxes on the character, beginning with the uppermost line. Some characters have a base stroke at the very bottom of the character. Base strokes must be made last.
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Tips & Warnings
Write Chinese characters in uniform size with identical gaps between each character.
Full stops are used in Chinese and should be drawn as a small circle at the lower part of the line, at the end of the sentence.
Vertical lines not ending in a horizontal stroke should be slightly tapered at the end. This effect can be achieved by lightening pressure at the end of a stroke.
Chinese uses a vast number of characters. Be prepared to memorize a great number of different patterns and shapes. Standard Chinese requires a student to know between 4,000 and 5,000 characters.
