So I've counted at least a dozen times, and I simply cannot get more than 14 strokes out of this kanji. It's made up of 竹, which is six strokes, and 者, which is eight. Yet both RTK and Kanjidic give 15 as the stroke count.

Is this an error? If not, where does the extra stroke come from?

~J

I expect it's because the stoke count for an older variant is still deemed to be the "official" one after simplification. Heisig mentions this phenomenon in respect to another character.

The variant is shown on this page:
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-bin/...ery=%BA%E6
(I had to change the encoding to "Big 5" to render the characters on this page.)

The 15th stroke is a little "drop" on top of the top right-hand corner of the "sun" radical.

My computer shows it with 15 strokes as well.

What's the consensus here on stroke counts? I've yet to use them in my studies.

As far as I know, stroke count is only needed for looking up kanji in traditional dictionaries

"Consensus" in what sense? My main use for them is to ensure that I've actually gotten a character correct when "air-writing"; it's handy for that, and I try to remember counts for common radicals so I can look them up in dictionaries (not just traditional ones, dictionaries that allow search-by-arbitrary-radical usually group radicals by stroke count), but I'm not sure there's much explicit use for them otherwise (since if you can write the character you can obtain the stroke count).

~J

woodwojr Wrote:"Consensus" in what sense? My main use for them is to ensure that I've actually gotten a character correct when "air-writing"; it's handy for that, and I try to remember counts for common radicals so I can look them up in dictionaries (not just traditional ones, dictionaries that allow search-by-arbitrary-radical usually group radicals by stroke count), but I'm not sure there's much explicit use for them otherwise (since if you can write the character you can obtain the stroke count).

~J

Interesting. 'Consensus' in the ironic sense (this is a forum, after all ;p). Was just curious about the ways people use it, since not everyone has done RTK from scratch and internalized the writings that way before going on directly to sentences. Just trying to see outside my self-study bubble!