Is there a “logic” to stroke order?

14 comments

1. Squares are always done the same ik that much

2. https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kanji-stroke-order/

3. https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kanji-stroke-order/

4. As far as both of my Japanese language profs have told me, it basically just makes them look better/more ‘correct’. Similarly, I was instructed in the third grade to write my english letters from “top to bottom”. I think it’s just a tradition of handwriting, but helped me really craft better penmanship.

   I still don’t really follow stroke order unless it’s for kanji. Helps me memorize the steps/strokes as well.

5. If I recall correctly, a popular way to represent Japanese phonetically around 650CE was *[man’yōgana](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dgana)*: one or more Chinese characters representing specific Japanese syllables. These characters written in the cursive *[sōshotai](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_script_(East_Asia))* style were eventually whittled down and simplified into a commonly-accepted set that became modern *hiragana*. Because of that, I believe the stroke order of *hiragana* characters is based broadly on the principles of printing Chinese characters, and maybe more specifically on the stroke order of the Chinese characters that the *hiragana* were derived from.

   A fun fact is that the modern set of *hiragana* characters were officially standardized in 1900. Prior to that you might see what are now called *[hentaigana](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana)*, “variant characters,” which represent the same syllables as the modern *hiragana* but were derived from different *man’yōgana* characters.

   Edit: I’m genuinely curious – what about this comment is worthy of downvoting? I gave an answer to OP’s question didn’t I?

6. Usually top to bottom and left to right. Usually if you have lots of horizontal lines with one vertical line going through them, the vertical line goes last. But there are lots of exceptions.

   You should learn the stroke order for the different radicals, which are always written the same way regardless of what kanji they appear in.

   Either way, once you learn a relatively small amount of kanji (like 2 or 300) you will be able to reliably guess the stroke order for new kanji. There are discernible patterns.

7. As has already been said, it’s generally left-to-right and top-to-bottom, *but* as with pretty much everything in every language, there are exceptions and many of them are in no way obvious or even slightly logical.

   While we’re at it, there’s one in particular that I’ve been wondering if anyone has *any* kind of explanation for – 左 and 右. They both start with the same ナ radical, BUT… in 左 the stroke order is to start with the horizontal from left to right… and in 右 the correct order is to start with the top-down stroke. I have no idea why.

8. Not really an answer to the “why?”, but it really helps if you learn the radicals first, since most Kanji are combinations of those.

   I used JA Sensei, the free version should be enough.

9. When it comes to the kana characters, the stroke order and direction of the strokes are derived from the stroke order of the original kanji/manyogana characters they were modified from.

   [Hiragana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#/media/File:Origin_of_Hiragana_.png) are basically cursive variations of those characters, and cursive writing has rules to follow the path of the stroke order even if you don’t use all of them or merge them.

   [Katakana](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Katakana_origine.svg/1862px-Katakana_origine.svg.png) simplifies and omits most of the strokes from the original character, but with a few exceptions, generally still follows the order and direction of the portions that are kept

10. Yea, it makes the word automatically look well-balanced if you follow stroke order.

11. Just start practicing and you’ll get a feel for it eventually.

12. The “why” of kana stroke order is the fact that kana are historically simplified kanji (cursive kanji for hiragana, parts of kanji for katakana), and follow the same stroke order as you would use to write the corresponding kanji or kanji part.

    The “why” of kanji stroke order is the fact that kanji are traditionally written using a brush. A brush is typically held so that the tip is pointing up and left, which is I suppose a natural way to use it if you are right-handed. This makes any strokes that would go up, left or up-left basically forbidden – both because they would look ugly when the tip is forced in the direction opposite the hairs, and because doing so damages the brush. For example, if 口 was written in one counterclockwise stroke, the right side would be drawn upwards and the top side leftwards, both against the brush. So since the strokes always go down and right (including up-right and down-left), the stroke order developed where it is natural to draw strokes top-down and right-to-left as a matter of general principle.

    The direction of writing does not seem to be a factor, since traditionally writing was done in columns right to left, not left to right found in the stroke order. Also, stroke order remains unchanged when writing in Western style (in rows top to bottom).

    These days calligraphy is a hobby or an art style (and the main writing implement seems to be a keyboard, virtual or otherwise), but knowing the stroke order rules is still useful in order to be able to recognise handwriting, especially if it is in a more cursive style, when strokes start to become connected and/or simplified.

13. To add to everyone else here as to regard to the “logic” part. They are usually drawn in an order that makes it least likely to do mistakes, overcrossing lines /overshooting and stuff like that

14. The real question is, why are you learning to physically write kana?