So currently I am working through the 6th edition of RTK1, when I happened to come across the kanji for "spinal column", 脊, listed as frame 268. Now, in the book, the stroke order for the kanji is given as two pairs of 2s, then 人 inbetween, then 月 below. However on Jisho.org, the stroke order is changed to where it is the 人 first, then the 2s, and then 月. http://jisho.org/search/%E8%84%8A%20%23kanji.

Now I know that Heisig later on introduces the primitive "I Ching" which might explain why he gave that stroke order in the book, however I find it much more cumbersome to draw the I-Ching first and the umbrella second.

Given that it is one of the Jōyō kanji introduced in 2010, one would think that there would be at least some documentation about stroke order, but surprisingly I have found next to none. Even the WWWJDIC entry for this character has no such information.

So if anyone can offer any advice to clear up this conflicting information, I would greatly appreciate it.

Also as this is my first post on this forum, I want to say "Hello" to all the members here. You guys are super awesome!

All of the Japanese sources I can find are the same as jisho's.

http://kakijun.jp/page/seki200.html
http://kanji.quus.net/kakijyun/1145.htm

Thank you so much for your help.

So I assume that it's safe to disregard the stroke order given in the book then?

I looked it up on a site used by native speakers for checking correct stroke order, and it starts with 人 and then the flanking 二 marks.

http://kakijun.jp/page/seki200.html

(edit: Oh, I guess zx573 was already writing while I was looking up. Shoulda refreshed I guess, heh.)

Thank you both. I'll definitely know where to look next time I run into any issues like this.

Yeah, I think it would be safe to ignore the order in the book in this case. For the record, you can Google search for "(kanji) 書き順" and it should bring up Japanese websites that show the stroke order in case you want to double check with a native Japanese source in the future.

(2016-04-11, 7:03 am)GuyInALabCoat Wrote: So if anyone can offer any advice to clear up this conflicting information, I would greatly appreciate it.

Heisig has published corrections for RTK on the Nanzan Institute website.

See the bottom of the RTK 1 page. This specific problem was addressed in "Errata in the 6th edition, 1st & 2nd printings."