Chinese Character  汉字 Hànzì

Chinese characters, also known as Hanzi (汉 字) in Mandarin. The Chinese character has a history of over 3000 years. The Chinese characters are the written symbols of the Chinese language. They are square in shape and called "fangkuaizi" which means "square characters". Chinese characters are different from the alphabetic script and written in various strokes. Mostly one Chinese character has one pinyin (Chinese pronunciation).

The elements of Chinese characters are image, sound, and meaning. There are six principles that are used to define and explicate the characters including pictographs , indicatives , ideatives , harmonics ,transmissives & and borrowed words.

To write a Chinese character, you should know its structure,  radicals , strokes , and strokes order.

Structure of Chinese Characters 汉字结构 Hànzì jiégòu

There are two categories of Chinese characters structure namely single-component words, and compound words. Single-component words are root words. For example,

Compound words have three forms of character structure, namely left-right structure, top-bottom structure, and outter-inner structure.

Radical  部件 Bùjiàn

Most Chinese characters can be analyzed into components. For example, 好 is made up of two components: 女 and 子 .Thus,

components are units which make up characters. Each component consists of strokes with the functions of making up Chinese characters. Learning to analyze characters into components will help one to remember the structure of a character and improve the efficiency in character learning.

Stroke 笔画 Bǐhuà

The smallest units of Chinese characters is called "stroke", and there are eight basic strokes.

Basic strokes of Chinese characters  汉字基本笔画 Hànzì jīběn bǐhuà

Chinese characters are written by combining various kinds of "strokes". The following are 8 basic strokes in the Chinese characters:

Stroke order 笔

Stroke-order or [bishun) is the order of strokes observed in characters writing. For example, the character "十" consists of two

strokes, a horizontal and a vertical. The horizontal stroke should be written before the vertical stroke. The following are the general rules of stroke order:

Example:-

1. Write the horizontal before the vertical  十 

2. Write the left-falling before the rightfalling 八  

3. Write from the top to the bottom 三 

4. Write from the left to the right 明 

5. Write the outside before the inside 用 

6. Write the middle before the other two 小 

sides

7. Write the inside before the sealing 日