Looking at it, I have no idea how it could possibly be written with 12 strokes, so go with 11. Kanjidic however also states it can be written in both 11 and 12 strokes though it gives no indication of how.

Umikuma wrote:

Once you get outside of the Jouyou kanji older form varients show up a lot more.

Yeah that's what i've noticed. Most chinese characters use the extra stroke form of 艸 (i.e 4 strokes) instead of the 3. I think the "japanese-way" is the 3 stroke way, while the Chinese way is 4.

This is my guess based off no research, i can't be mucked.

You get used to it.

My first kanji dictionary was Rose-innes - almost pocket sized in a red hard cover. It listed kanji under both old and new forms, with cross references in between. I quickly learned the varients for a bunch of common elements while using it. There are better dictionaries now, but it was marvelous at the time. Then the original Nelson came out. A huge tome that was wonderful for study, but Rose-Innes was still the one I carried around because it was much smaller and more convenient.

There's a reprint on google: http://books.google.com/books?id=c9BDYK … rose-innes