East Asian Calligraphy/Basic stroke order

Generally speaking, the strokes in Chinese characters are written from top to bottom, left to right.

Chinese Characters

There are several stroke order rules for Chinese characters: top to bottom, left to right, inside to outside. For example, the Chinese character for "hit", 打, the left part is written from top to bottom, then the right part is written from top to bottom. The order in which the characters are written can be expressed through drawing a tree diagram. An example of inside to outside stroke order is in the character for "round", 圓. The top two strokes of the box on the outside is written first (because of top to bottom order), then the inside is written top to bottom, and the bottom horizontal stroke is written last to enclose it.

Exceptions

There are many stroke order exceptions in Chinese orthography. For example in the character "上", meaning "up", the middle horizontal line is written first, then the vertical stroke, then the bottom stroke. This is an exception to the left to right stroke order rule.