Stroke order rules for kanji and Chinese characters
Chinese characters and Japanese kanji are written in a set order, and nearly all of it follows a handful of rules. Learn these and most new characters can be written correctly before you look them up. Each example links to its page, where you can watch it stroke by stroke and trace it.
Top before bottom
Strokes higher up come first.
Left before right
Strokes on the left come first.
Horizontal before vertical
Where a horizontal and a vertical cross, the horizontal is usually written first.
Left-falling before right-falling
The stroke slanting down to the left comes before the one slanting down to the right.
Centre before the sides
In a character that is symmetrical about a central stroke, the centre comes first.
Outside before inside
A frame is begun before what goes inside it.
Close the frame last
The inside of a box is written before its bottom stroke closes it: “go in, then shut the door”.
A stroke through the middle comes last
A vertical or horizontal stroke that cuts through the whole character is written after the rest.
Small dots last
A dot set off to one side is usually written at the end.
The famous exception: 右 and 左
In Japanese, 右 (right) starts with the slanting stroke and 左 (left) with the horizontal, though the two look almost alike: the shorter stroke goes first. In Chinese, both start with the horizontal. Rules give the usual order; a character's own page gives its actual one.
Why stroke order matters
Writing in the standard order makes characters balanced and quicker to write, makes cursive and handwritten forms readable, and is what handwriting input on phones expects. Japanese and Chinese standards agree on almost every character; where they differ, each language's page here follows its own.
Practise it, a few minutes a day
Ink a Day checks every stroke as you draw it, then brings characters back just before you'd forget them.
Pick characters to practise