Strokes & Radicals

The Basic Strokes

Every Chinese character is built from a small set of strokes. Knowing them is the foundation of writing.

Stroke	Name	Pinyin	Shape
一	héng	横	Horizontal, left to right
丨	shù	竖	Vertical, top to bottom
丿	piě	撇	Slant down-left
㇏	nà	捺	Slant down-right
丶	diǎn	点	Dot, slanted down-right
乛	zhé	折	Turn / bend
亅	gōu	钩	Hook at the end

The character 人 ("person") is made of just two strokes: a piě and a nà.

Quiz

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