Stroke (CJK character)

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The CJK strokes (also known as the CJK(V) or CJKV strokes) are the strokes needed to write the Chinese characters used in East Asia. The corresponding CJKV characters being the characters that come from Chinese Hanzi, and which are now used in China, Japan, Korea, and still a little in Vietnam.

There are some thirty distinct types of strokes recognized in Chinese characters, some of which are compound strokes made from basic strokes. The compound strokes comprise more than one movement of the writing instrument, and many of these have no agreed-upon name.

Each single stroke includes all the motions necessary to produce a given part of a character before lifting the writing instrument from the writing surface; thus, a single stroke may have abrupt changes in direction within the line. For example:

Image:S-black.png is one stroke, named Shu, and also a basic stroke (one direction)

Image:SZZ-black.png is a compound stroke, named ShuZheZhe, comprised of 3 basic strokes but written without lifting the writing instrument from the writing surface.

Several aspects of interest in the study of CJK(V) strokes are, for example, their use in East Asian calligraphy (how write them, which shape, which way), their change according to which style is in use, their naming and counting conventions, and their use on computers.

[edit] Basic and compound strokes

The "dot" is rarely a real dot. Instead it usually takes the shape of a very small line pointing in one of several directions, and may be long enough to be confused with other strokes.

Certain strokes (such as zhé and gōu, the "hook" and "break") never occur alone, but always in compound strokes. Thus, they are not in themselves individual strokes.

The character for "eternity" shown at right demonstrates some of these compound strokes. The centre line is a compound stroke that combines three stroke shapes in a single stroke.

[edit] Writing CJK strokes

See also: Stroke order

In order to be able to write CJK characters one first has to know how to write CJK strokes, and thus, needs to identify the basic strokes that make up a character. The following section lists the most usual common shapes of the basic CJK strokes, and the proper way of writing each. Many different lists of basic strokes coexist and there is no broad agreement as far as the stroke names are concerned (examples). We use a set of 37 CJK strokes based on the 8 basic strokes of 永, and 29 other compound strokes. We also use a common naming system, which is not the only available. The strokes are painted in black and a red arrow shows the way to write it (you can click on images to enlarge them).

The 8 principles of Yong, the 8 basic strokes^[1].

Image:D-black.png － the Diǎn 點, is a Dot. Filled from the top, to the bottom, traditionally made by "couching" the brush on the page.

Image:H-black.png － the Héng 横, is horizontal. Filled from left to right, the same way the Latin letters A, B,C,D are written.

Image:S-black.png － the Shù 豎, is vertical-falling. The brush begins by a dot on top, then falls downward.

Image:G-black.png － the Gōu 鉤, ending another stroke, is a sharp change of direction either down (after a Heng) or left (after a Shù).

Image:T-black.png － the Tí 提, is a flick up and rightwards

Image:W-black.png － the Wān 彎, follows a concave path on the left or on the right

Image:P-black.png － the Piě 撇, is a falling leftwards (with a slight curve)

Image:N-black.png － the Nà 捺, is falling rightwards (with an emphasis at the end of the stroke)

(+ Image:XG-black.png － the Xié 斜 is some time added to the 永's strokes. It's a concave Shù falling right, always ended by a Gōu, visible on this image).

8 basics making 29 compound strokes^[1]

This 8 traditional basic strokes are used to make all other compound strokes －or complex strokes－. In example, Shù plus Gōu produce Image:SG-black.png named ShùGōu. The new way of naming strokes is simply the sum of the names of the basic strokes, in the writing order. Moreover, a turn of 90⁰ (and only of 90⁰) producing a Shù or a Héng is called Zhé 折. In example, Héng plus Shù plus Gōu produces Image:HZG-black.png named HéngZhéGōu. Shù plus Héng plus Shù produces a ShùZhéZhé (Image:SZZ-black.png). Nearly all complex strokes can be named using this simple scheme.

It is essential to recognize and know how to draw the different strokes that make a character. In order to draw properly a Chinese character, it is also necessary to draw the strokes with respect to a certain order. This stroke order composition is explained in the next section.

[edit] CJKV strokes in Unicode

The Unicode "CJK Strokes" range encodes 16 basic strokes, at codepoints U+31C0–31CF (as of Unicode version 4.1):

This list is not complete for several reasons :

• this list complete the Kangxi radicals in Unicode, then strokes which are also radicals are not include ;
• this list exclude about 15 compound strokes, such ShùZhé, ShùZhéZhé, HéngZhé,...
• Unicode plans to add twenty more CJK strokes, using the codepoints 31D0 through 31E3.

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• CJK characters
• Chinese characters, Kanji, Hanja
• Stroke order
• East Asian calligraphy

[edit] References

• 16 strokes, by Unicode (completing the 214 Radical list)
• Proposal to add twenty strokes to Unicode; this proposal has been approved and is at Stage 6 of the Unicode Pipeline as of July 30, 2007.
• 38 CJK strokes, by Wenlin intituteja:筆画

zh-yue:筆畫 zh:笔画