Hello all,

I've noticed that Heisig gives 豬 as 15 strokes (sow + puppet), and yet other sources count it to be 16: specifically, there should be an extra stroke (number 12).
Here is the missing stroke on a japanese stroke order website:

http://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/dictiona..._id=142066

However, this stroke doesn't seem to be visible in some fonts, but is in others (it is to me on this forum, for example). It's also plainly visible on Chinese written sources such as the character's entry in the Kangxi dictionary (#2):

http://www.kangxizidian.com/kangxi/1198.gif

I do hate learning anything incorrectly, so I'd be very grateful if anyone could shed any light on the matter of this mysterious extra stoke.
And, indeed, if there are any other characters like this?

Many thanks.

Neither is "incorrect," unless by that you mean "nonstandard," in which case it depends on which standard. Things like this often vary depending on which font and/or which country's standard you're talking about. By the way, if you're learning Chinese, I don't know why you'd check a Japanese stroke order website, but whatever.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Education prescribes 15 strokes. The 16 stroke version often appears in print. I have no idea what China or Hong Kong prescribe. But really, it isn't worth worrying about.

Sorry, incorrect was the wrong word; did I mean non-standard? I think, if I had to pick a 'standard', it would be that of traditional calligraphy (which isn't really a standard anyway, just a time-honed praxis). But calligraphers are and were ever very picky about strokes and stroke order, and they have history behind them to support it. And all the various national standards of Taiwan, the PRC and so on are ultimately derived from them.

Forgive me; I only want to know how to write in the best possible tradition: and China had a longer unbroken tradition than any other country on earth. Once I know that, then talk to me about national standards.

But on the subject of standards, I do wish Heisig had stuck to one. Or at least told us which one his stroke orders for any particular character was. The last two strokes in 我 (and similar), for example, are reversed from Heisig in Taiwan. He doesn't tell us that. But for 艹, he gives us the Taiwan order (and the 'traditional' one), which I believe is not the official order in Hong Kong.

In my green and pleasent land I am not, alas, surrounded by Chinese scholars of whom I can ask which is preferable. Which is why I ask here.
I know that it's not worth worrying about if I were merely trying to make sure I was understood in writing; but I'm not simply trying to ensure that: I want to do it well, too.

My point is that "correct" is relative. Calligraphers don't even agree amongst themselves on stroke order, and never have, or even on how a character should look once you get done writing it. Look at some of Ouyang Xun's writing, for example. He's considered by many to be the exemplar of 楷書 kaishu writing, and a lot of his characters hardly resemble their modern forms. If you wrote like him, of course you'd have beautiful handwriting, but then most native speakers would tell you that you were writing incorrectly. You'd be justified in saying your writing was "orthodox," but generally in their minds you'll be wrong by default about that by virtue of being a non-native speaker.

All that said, if you want to learn orthodox writing (and I'm not discouraging that whatsoever), you'll probably have to study 書法 because calligraphers are the only people who care about such things. In order to do that, you'll first have to learn Chinese, because there's nearly no good information about it in English (though I've heard Chiang Yee's Chinese Calligraphy: An Introduction to Its Aesthetic and Technique is supposed to be decent). In order to learn Chinese, you'll likely have to stick with one country's standard, at least for a while. I'd recommend Taiwan's standard, because it sticks more closely to traditional calligraphic rules than China's or Hong Kong's. Of course, Japan is even better about that if you ignore their simplifications, but again, you're learning Chinese so it wouldn't make much sense.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you're going to study calligraphy in-depth, you're going to have to do some research into the history and development of the writing system and character etymology. Heisig gets that stuff so wrong it's absurd, so you're going to have to relearn a lot anyway if you use his book.

Some books in English you might find useful along the way are Johan Björkstén's Learn to Write Chinese Characters and Fred Wang's Introduction to Chinese Cursive Script or Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese (same book, two different versions).

When I'm unsure about how a character is properly drawn I like to look at it under various fonts on Microsoft Word, especially 'handwriting' fonts like Kaiti and DFKai-SB (which seems to be very close to, if not the same as, what this site uses).

Kaiti, DFKai, SimSun and PMing LiU all show the 15-stroke version (with no drop above 日). If I'm not mistaken, all of these are fonts used to write Chinese. Kozuka Gothic Pro EL (Japanese), Meiryo (Japanese), Batang (Korean I believe) and Meiryo UI show the 16-stroke variant.

Hence, I would be confident in writing the 15-stroke version for Chinese, and the 16-stroke version may (or may not) be best for Japanese.

Thanks for reminding me how to write the character!

Hello bflatnine,

many thanks for your comments.

Yes, you are quite right, I have come to the conclusion that competency in vernacular Mandarin is a sine qua non to being able to access the vast majority of the scholarship on the things I'm actually interested in--classical literature, calligraphy, ancient philosophies and so on. All the English stuff is very watered-down.
I'll investigate Chiang Yee's book.

I have looked into calligraphy so far as the language barrier will take me. And it's *insert expletive* difficult. And yet it looks so easy and natural! And that's just getting 楷書 to look half-decent with a brush. But I take your point that no 'traditional stroke order' has never been set in stone (unlike all the great calligraphers).

I've had 'Introduction to Chinese Cursive Script' on my amazon wishlist for a long time, but haven't got around to buying it yet. There is, so far as I've seen, nothing whatsoever about 篆書 in English; certainly not regarding stroke order.

And yes, you are, I think, alas, right that being a 'foreigner' makes me 'wrong' if I do anything which any particular Chinese person doing the judging doesn't do. But my object here isn't to impress the Chinese; it is solely for my own intellectual satisfaction.