Brush Strokes and Writing Rules

Brush strokes (bihua 筆畫) are units of which Chinese characters are composed. They correspond to the movement of the brush during the writing process. The shape of brush strokes has been standardized for the normal script (kaishu 楷書) and is imitated in book printing, especially the Song-period style Songti 宋體 and its modern variant, the Fangsongti 仿宋體. The number of brush strokes in a character is used for indexing, for instance, in dictionaries.

Brush strokes only appeared with the invention of the chancery script (lishu 隸書) with its square or angled appearance. The older seal script (zhuanshu 篆書) has a more soft appearance with round edges which is not easy to write with a brush. This change of the appearance of characters and the writing method resulted in a more abstract form of characters, in which the original shapes are often not any more recognizable. Chinese characters so became ever more ideographic than pictographic.

Many dictionaries do index characters in a two-layer system, first according to the radical (radicals themselves also arranged according to the number of brush strokes), and then according to the number of residual strokes. Instead of using the radical, quite a few dictionaries and lexica make exclusively use of the number and shapes of brush strokes to index characters.

There are several different types of brushstrokes, depending on length, shape and brush movement. Traditional calligraphers developed several models with different complexities. The most important types of brush stokes are:

Table 1. Types and sub-types of brush strokes

Basic strokes			Extended strokes
	點 dian	dot
	横 heng	horizontal line		横撇 hengpie	horizontal stroke with a downward hook
				横折彎鉤 hengzhe wangou	horizontal stroke with a long bent hook
				横折折撇 hengzhe zhepie	horizontal stroke with a double broken slant
				横折折彎鉤 hengzhe zhe wangou	horizontal stroke with a double broken hook
				横折挑 hengzhe tiao	horizontal stroke with a slant hook
	竪 shu	vertical line		竪折 shuzhe	vertical stroke with a horizontal hook upwards
				竪折撇 shuzhe pie	vertical stroke with a double broken slant
				竪折折鉤 shuzhe zhegou	vertical stroke with a double broken hook
	撇 pie	slant to the left		撇折 piezhe	left slant with a sharp bend towards the right
				撇點 piedian	left slant with a dot towards the lower right
	捺 na	slant to the right
	挑 tiao	dot strechted to the upper right
	折 zhe	right edge downwards
	鉤 gou	vertical hook to the left

With the invention of the brush, the modern style of calligraphy developed with up to 16 different stroke patterns and several rules how to write a character and its elemens. Every character can be separated into a certain number of strokes, the simpliest character being a single horizontal stroke 一 "one", one of the most complex characters, written with 48 brush strokes, is 龘, consisting of three dragons 龍.

The six basic brush strokes are, according to the Ming-period 明 (1368-1644) encyclopaedia Sancai tuhui 三才圖會:

Table 2. Standard shapes and sub-shapes

一	horizontal (heng 橫)
丨	vertical (shu 竪 or zhi 直)
丶	dot (dian 點)
丿	slant to the left without hook or slant to the right with hook, with many derivatives (pie 撇)
亅	hook (gou 勾)
乁	slant to the right bottom (ne 抐 or na 捺)

This basic set can be enlarged to eight different strokes, exemplarified in the character yong 永:

Figure 1. The "eight [brush stroke] rules" as seen in the character yong 永

dian 點 "dot" or ce 側

heng 橫 "horizontal" or le 勒

shu 竪 "vertical" or nu 努

tiao 挑 "lift-up" or ti 趯

zuoshang 左上 "towards upper left" or ce 策

zuoxia 左下 "towards lower left" or lüe 掠

youshang 右上 "towards upper right" or zhuo 啄

youxia 右下 "towards lower right" or zhe 磔

From Sancai tuhui 三才圖會, Renshi 人事, 3.

Today, there are five different types of strokes, exemplarified in the character zha 札:

Figure 2. The brush stroke rules as seen in the character zha 札

一 heng 橫 "horizontal"

丨 zhi 直 "vertical"

丿 pie 撇 "bend to the lower left"

丶 dian 點 "dot"

乙 na 捺 "bend to the lower right" or "hook"

The sequence of brush strokes (bishun 筆順) is also subject to strict rules and important for indexing characters, at least concering the first few strokes. The basic rules of stroke order are:

Table 3. Rules for the sequence of brush strokes

from left to right

from top to bottom

vertical strokes in the middle are written first if the middle stroke is longer

left and right enclosures are written last

from outside to inside

first fill the box, then close it

lower enclosures are written last

first horizontal, then vertical

vertical strokes in the middle are written last if passing other strokes

hooks beginning vertically are written last if touching or passing other strokes

first from right to left (pie 撇), then from left to right (na 捺)

in x-crossed parts first the left slant, then the right

protruding horizontal crossing strokes are written last

dots in the upper left corner are written first

dots in the upper right corner or inside are written last

Yet in calligraphy, these rules are often not adhered to.

In the first character 王, the calligrapher wrote the vertical stroke before combining the two lower horizontal strokes. In the second, 右, the slant vertical character was written before the horizontal one, and in the lower examples, the calligraphers begin with the left part of the character, in opposition to the rule, which demands that the central part (the vertical stroke) is written before the enclosure.