Chinese stroke order: rules, examples and animated practice

What are the basic Chinese stroke order rules?

Stroke order (筆順 / 笔顺) is the fixed sequence in which the strokes of a Chinese character are written. It isn't arbitrary — it follows a handful of consistent rules that make characters quicker to write and better balanced:

• Top to bottom — upper strokes before lower ones (三, 言).
• Left to right — left strokes before right ones (川, 你).
• Horizontal before vertical — when strokes cross (十, 干).
• Outside before inside, closing the frame last (回, 國).
• Centre before symmetrical sides (小, 水).

Writing characters in the correct order makes your handwriting look natural, helps you memorise characters more quickly, and is what handwriting-recognition input methods expect. StrokeGrid animates every character one stroke at a time so you can see exactly where each line starts and ends.

What is a 米字格 grid?

A 米字格 (mǐzìgé) is the practice square drawn around each character. It's crossed by horizontal, vertical and two diagonal guide lines — the pattern resembles the character 米 ("rice"), which is where the name comes from.

Those guide lines mark the centre and proportions of the square, so you can position each stroke evenly and keep your characters balanced. It's the same grid generations of students have used in Chinese handwriting workbooks, and practising inside it trains your eye for spacing far better than writing on a blank line.

Pinyin, bopomofo & pronunciation

Each character can be labelled two ways. Pinyin (e.g. nǐ) uses the Latin alphabet with tone marks — the romanisation standard in mainland China. Bopomofo, also called zhuyin (注音, ㄅㄆㄇㄈ), uses phonetic symbols and is the system standard in Taiwan.

In the tool, pinyin appears above each character and bopomofo runs down the right-hand side. Tap Speak to hear the whole phrase read aloud, so you can connect each written character to its sound and tone. If you know a pronunciation but not the characters, use the Traditional Chinese Pinyin input and phrase helper to find the matching Hanzi first.

How to use StrokeGrid

1. Type one or more Chinese characters into the box and press Enter.
2. Watch each character animate in correct stroke order inside its 米字格.
3. Use Replay, Play all or Loop to repeat, and the Speed slider to slow the animation down for practice.
4. Toggle Outline off to hide the character and test yourself from memory.

Stroke order rules with examples to practise

These patterns help you predict many strokes, but they are starting points rather than a rule that overrides every individual character. Replay each example to check its complete sequence.

• Top first: practise 三 (sān, three), with three horizontal strokes.
• Crossing lines: practise 十 (shí, ten); the horizontal stroke comes before the vertical one.
• Left-falling before right-falling: practise 人 (rén, person).
• Finish the enclosure last: practise 回 (huí, return); the outer bottom stroke closes the shape after the inside is written.

For reference, Taiwan's Ministry of Education publishes basic stroke order rules. Follow your teacher's model when a regional standard differs from an animation.

How can I practise Chinese handwriting on paper?

Watch a character's stroke sequence, copy it once, and then try it from memory. Use the Chinese writing practice sheet generator to make a printable sheet from your own vocabulary. 米字格 provides diagonal guides, while 田字格 has horizontal and vertical guides.

Start with a few characters from a meaningful word, such as 你好 (hello), rather than filling a page with unrelated characters. Return to the animation when you are unsure where a stroke begins.

Free Chinese writing and Pinyin tools

Use the animated Chinese stroke order tool to check any character or phrase, browse the Chinese character index, or make a printable Chinese writing practice sheet. To type Traditional Chinese more easily on a Windows computer, try the Traditional Chinese Pinyin input tool, which returns Traditional character suggestions instead of the Simplified phrase suggestions shown by the default Windows Chinese Pinyin keyboard.

Sources and learning notes

StrokeGrid uses Hanzi Writer and its Make Me a Hanzi character data. Animation coverage, regional stroke conventions and automatic pronunciation can vary. Read about StrokeGrid and its data sources for details.