Stroke (CJK character)

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:: is one stroke, named Shu, and also a basic stroke (one direction): 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.

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.

Writing CJK strokes

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 strokesThe extended CJK set of strokes has 29 strokes. These most common 29 used strokes can be reduced to combinations of 8 basic strokes. This subset is found in the character "eternity" 永, hence the name of this set. But other sets of CJK strokes can be found. See CJK strokes for further explanations] .: － the Diǎn 點, is a Dot. Filled from the top, to the bottom, traditionally made by "couching" the brush on the page.: － the Héng 横, is horizontal. Filled from left to right, the same way the Latin letters A, B,C,D are written.: － the Shù 豎, is vertical-falling. The brush begins by a dot on top, then falls downward.: － the Gōu 鉤, ending another stroke, is a sharp change of direction either down (after a Heng) or left (after a Shù).: － the Tí 提, is a flick up and rightwards: － the Wān 彎, follows a concave path on the left or on the right: － the Piě 撇, is a falling leftwards (with a slight curve): － the Nà 捺, is falling rightwards (with an emphasis at the end of the stroke):(+ － 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 strokesb] This 8 traditional basic strokes are used to make all other compound strokes －or complex strokes－. In example, Shù "plus" Gōu produce ). 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.

Notes

See also

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

References

* [http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U31C0.pdf New set of 36 strokes, by Unicode]
* [http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3063.pdf Proposal to add twenty strokes to Unicode] ; this proposal has been approved and is at Stage 6 of the [http://www.unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html Unicode Pipeline] as of July 30, 2007.
* [http://www.wenlin.com/cdl/cdl_strokes_2004_05_23.pdf 38 CJK strokes, by Wenlin intitute]