Stroke forms () are the shapes of strokes. Different classification schemes have different numbers of categories by which one may classify individual strokes.
Two categories The strokes of
modern Chinese characters can be divided into
plane strokes () and
turning or
bent strokes () . •
Plane or
basic strokes move in only one direction, or only curve gently—usually less than 90 degrees. :Examples:
heng (, ),
ti (, ),
shu (, ),
pie (, ),
dian (, ),
na (, ) •
Bent strokes are composed of plane strokes and turning points with sharper bends. Bent strokes also called
derived strokes () or
compound strokes (). :Examples:.
Five categories When the six plane strokes of are classified into four categories by putting "ti" into category
heng, and
na into
dian, then together with the bent stroke category, a five-category system is formed: •
heng (, ),
ti (, ). • shu (, ). • pie (, ). • dian (, ),
na (, ). • Bent strokes: . Current national standards of PRC such as
Stroke Orders of Commonly-used Standard Chinese Characters and many reference works published in China adopt the five categories of strokes, and stipulate the
heng–
shu–
pie–
dian–
zhe () stroke-group order. This order is consistent with the stroke order of the character : ㇐㇑㇓㇔㇟, and as such is called the " order". In Hong Kong and Taiwan among other places, people also use the group order of
dian–
heng–
shu–
pie–
zhe () The five basic strokes of
heng (),
shu (),
pie (),
dian (), and
zhe () at the beginning of each group are called main stroke shapes; and the following strokes are called subordinate stroke shapes, or secondary strokes. The name of a category is the name of the main stroke. For example, category
heng include main stroke
heng and secondary stroke
ti. There are disputes over the classification of the vertical hook stroke () among the five types of strokes. In the currently effective national standards, belongs to category
shu, but some language scholars argue that it should be put in the
zhe ('bend') category.
Eight categories In this classification, a new category
gou ( 'hook'), which include all the strokes with hooks, is divided out from the original bend category; then, together with the six types of plane strokes, an eight-category system is formed: •
heng (): ㇐ •
ti (): ㇀ •
shu (): ㇑ •
pie (): ㇓ •
dian (): ㇔ •
na (): ㇏ •
zhe ( 'bend'): ㇕ ㇅ ㇎ ㇋ ㇊ ㇍ ㇇ ㇗ ㇞ ㄣ ㇙ ㇄ ㇜ ㇛ •
gou (, 'hook'): ㇡ ㇈ 乙 ㇆ ㇌ ㇉ ㇟ ㇚ ㇃ ㇂ Because the character happens to contain strokes similar to each of these eight types, this classification is also called the
Eight Principles of Yong.
CJK strokes The stroke forms of a
standard Chinese character set can be classified into a more detailed stroke table (or stroke list), for instance, the Unicode CJK strokes list has 36 types of stroke: A stroke table is also called a stroke alphabet, whose function in the Chinese writing system is akin to the Latin alphabet for the English writing system.
YES strokes Another stroke table is the YES Stroke Alphabet, which is used in
YES stroke alphabetical order.
Stroke alphabet This is a list of 30 strokes: The stroke alphabet is built on the basis of
Unicode CJK Strokes and the
Standard of Chinese Character Bending Strokes of the GB13000.1 Character Set. There are totally 30 strokes, sorted by the standard plane strokes order of
heng (, ),
tiao, ti (, ),
shu (, ),
pie (, ),
dian (, ),
na (, ) and the bending points order of
zhe (),
wan () and
gou ().
Names The English name is formed by the initial
Pinyin letters of each character in the Chinese name, similar to the naming of CJK strokes in Unicode, (i.e., H:
heng, T:
ti/tiao, S:
shu, P:
pie, D:
dian, N:
na; z:
zhe, w:
wan and g:
gou). For more on stroke forms, stroke naming and stroke tables, please visit the previous sections. == Stroke order ==