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Far from being complicated drawings, Chinese characters are made out of simple single strokes, all of them variations of only eight basic ones. All strokes have their own name and are written according to a few rules. It’s very important to learn to recognize them, since the number of strokes in a character is often the easiest way to find it in an index… but this will become clear after learning radicals and the use of dictionaries.

1. The following are the first six strokes, the fundamental ones:

 

	heng	horizontal stroke (written from left to right)	as in the character yi (one)
	shu	vertical stroke (written from top to bottom)	as in the character shi (ten)
	pie	down stroke to the left (written from top right to bottom left)	as in the character ba (eight)
	na	down stroke to the right (written from top left to bottom right)	as in the character ru (to enter)
	dian	dot (written from top to bottom right or left)	as in the character liu (six)
	ti	upward stroke (written from bottom left to top right)	as in the character ba (to grasp)

 

2. The last two strokes have several different variations. The first group is composed by five strokes with a hook:

 

	henggou	horizontal stroke with a hook	as in the character zi (character)
	shugou	vertical stroke with a hook	as in the character xiao (small)
	wangou	bending stroke with a hook	as in the character gou (dog)
	xiegou	slant stroke with a hook	as in the character wo (I, me)
	pinggou	level bending stroke with a hook	as in the character wang (to forget)

 

3. And the following by two single strokes with a turn:

 

	shuzhe	vertical stroke with a horizontal turn to the right	as in the character yi (doctor, medicine)
	hengzhe	horizontal stroke with a vertical turn	as in the character kou (mouth)

 

4. Combined strokes are made out of basic ones. The following are a few examples:

	shuwangou	vertical stroke combined with a level bending stroke with a hook	as in the character ye (also)
	piedian	down stroke to the left combined with a dot	as in the character nu (woman)
	shuzhezhegou	vertical stroke with a double turn and a hook	as in the character ma (horse)

If a character can be compared to a word in alphabetic languages, then strokes are like letters… learning them is the key to memorize characters. And then, characters don’t only need to be correct, they should also be as beautiful and balanced as possible. It is therefore necessary to copy the single strokes many times (be it with a brush or, much easier, with a pen) to memorize their shape and thickness.

The way strokes are combined into characters involves learning a few rules on stroke order; this will be the goal of our next lesson.