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Stroke Order


js6426

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What is the best website/app for learning the stroke order of characters?  I am not looking for something like Skritter which will teach me how to write each individual character, but rather the general rules.  I have made the mistake of going ahead and just writing characters anyway I please, thinking nobody is really going to notice the difference.  A couple of days ago a 10 year old girl saw me sat studying and told me my stroke order was all wrong, she didn't see me write anything, she knew just by looking at my characters.  So, before I get into even worse habits and learn more characters incorrectly, I'd love to get the general rules down.  From what I've seen they look really complicated.  I asked her why 国 (I don't know the names for the various strokes yet) has the left bit written first, whereas 成 has the top bit written first.  She couldn't tell me, but I imagine there must be somewhere than can.  Any recommendations?  Thanks in advance!

 

Jonny

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If you can read simple traditional Chinese characters, take a look at the 11 simple rules at

 

http://www.hkedcity.net/edb/teachingresources/project/?p=bihuabishun&path=/whatisbishun

 

The rules apply to simplified characters as well.  That would get you to at least 90% correctness.  The rest would be the exceptions, regional differences, or characters that have multiple common stroke orders (like 必), or nuances like the difference in stroke order of the top part of 左 and 右.

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Learn through doing.  Most Chinese textbooks include a bit at the end of the chapter showing stroke order and providing space to practice.  When I started learning, I always checked the stroke order animation on MDBG and repeated it over and over again in my little character practice book.  After a few hundred characters you start to "see" the stroke order pretty easily.  One of the reasons for why this works is that it means you pick up the stroke order for radicals, and then it just becomes a question of which order the radicals are written in rather than which order the strokes are in.

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