成人快手

Mandarin characters are formed with strokes.

How many strokes are there?

There are around thirty strokes in total in Mandarin. Here are five of them:

Image caption,
small dash
Image caption,
left to right, straight down, hook at the end
Image caption,
left to right, fall left and curve
Image caption,
fall left and curve
Image caption,
fall right and flatten

For many centuries the character 测菕苍驳 (forever) has been used to practice writing characters correctly, as it contains each of the strokes listed above. Can you spot them?

The Mandarin character 'yong', meaning 'forever'

How do you write strokes?

Strokes are written in a certain order in Mandarin to make characters quicker and easier to complete, and to help make them look the same each time:

1. Top to bottom

2. Left to right

3. Horizontal then vertical

4. Intersecting (a line that crosses another line) stroke last

5. Diagonal right to left

6. Diagonal left to right

7. Outside frame before inside

8. Inside before closing frame

More on Language skills: Knowledge about language

Find out more by working through a topic