I’ve noticed that Skritter’s stroke order for 月 changes depending on context. Being kind of new to this whole Chinese writing thing, I would have thought that it would always be the same. Is it the case that characters are sometimes written with a different order or is this an anomaly in Skritter?

For instance, today Skritter asked me to write 那儿 and then a little later it asked me to write 明. For 那儿 the correct stroke order for the 月 component of 那 was: hooked stroke, the two horizontal strokes and then the left stroke. For the 月 component of 明 the correct stroke order was: left stroke, hooked stroke and then the two horizontal strokes.

This is causing me some trouble in remembering how to write characters with 月. If this is the way it is done then I guess I'll figure out some mnemonic for remembering which is which. Otherwise, it would be nice to have the anomaly resolved.

Those are actually different characters - 月 (yue4) is the radical component in 明, whereas the leftmost element in 那 is 冄 (ran3 - itself is composed of two radicals, 冂 and 二)

If you click the magnifying glass, you can look up the character on various dictionary sites. Yellowbridge has the character etymology, which I recommend highly.

Take a look at http://www.skritter.com/stroke-order and apply rules 6, 2 and 3 to the left side of 那.

And there's also another one like 月 that's actually 肉. I certainly was surprised when I saw that. (Eg bottom left in 赢）

Aha! I've always wondered why 月 was part of 那 and now I know the answer: it isn't!

The responses are all helpful, thanks everyone.

Looks like I need to sharpen my observational powers. After comparing 那 and 月 more closely I can see that the horizontal lines in 那 are on top of the left stroke and that for 月 the horizontal strokes are not. So for 月 the order of the horizontal strokes is governed by the outside before inside rule. OTHO, for 那 (or actually 冄, thanks Zach) the horizontal lines must be drawn before the vertical lines since they intersect with the left stroke which must be drawn last. That makes it easy to remember.

Thanks again!

Hey guys.. just wanted to let you know that chinese words are written from up to down, left to right.

There is a interactive chinese english dictionary at www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

:) happy writing!

One thing that always gets me is the order when you have two 丶's and a 一, for example 母 and 舟 (for example, 每 and 盘). I haven't yet worked out the rule that Skritter uses for the order.

Because of rule 9, the two dots are the last 2 strokes. Then apply rule 1 to draw the top one before the bottom one.

Actually, rule 9 is more complicated. If the dot is on the top or top left, it is written first. Only if the dot is on the bottom, inside or top right, then it is written last.

The two 丶 in 母 always come before the 一. (But if you do it really fast, you can probably get away with using in different orders without anybody seeing you!)

My copy of "Reading and writing Chinese" by William McNaughton and Li Ying has the 一 first and the 丶s afterwards. I assume on the same principle as 小: centre first wings second.

I think there was a forum thread about this before. As I recall, the stroke order was different in Taiwan and in the PRC, and maybe Japan as well.

James