Stroke-direction atlas

How a direction is read

The start of a stroke is the first moveto in its path. The end is the point the last command arrives at. The chord is the straight line from start to end. It is not the curve the pen draws.

That line is placed in one of eight sectors of 45°. In the SVG, y grows downward, so upward is a smaller y. A line within 22.5° of due right is rightward, and the same cone is used for downward, leftward, and upward. A line on the 22.5° boundary belongs to the cardinal sector. A line outside every cone is the diagonal of its quadrant: down-right, down-left, up-left, or up-right. A line of length zero is no movement.

The finish is a second reading. It is the straight line of the last drawing command only, from where that command begins to where it ends. A hook can turn at the end while the stroke as a whole still runs downward or to the right.

kvg:type is copied as the file writes it, including a suffix letter and a slash between two stroke characters. A type is hook-bearing when one of its CJK stroke characters has a Unicode name whose last token contains G. The exact type ㇀ is the rising stroke. A compound that merely contains that character is counted apart from the exact type.

Eight directions

Where the first stroke starts

Where the next stroke starts

School lists of stroke order are a different document. See The rules of stroke order and the Rule audit. This page does not restate that list. The numbers here are frequencies in the KanjiVG files.

The cinnabar dots are the starts. On these characters, each next start is either to the right of the one before it or lower on the page, and at least half of the steps are lower. A later start may still sit above an earlier one, so the dots do not all march downward.

Strokes that run the other way

Up-right

Up-right strokes. The table is every type string that accounts for them. The characters are the shortest in the files, then by code point.

Leftward

Leftward strokes. The table is the type string on those strokes. The characters are the shortest in the files, then by code point.

The indigo arrow is the chord from start to end. These two characters each have a stroke that runs leftward.

The rising stroke ㇀

The indigo arrow is the chord. These two characters were chosen because the exact type ㇀ runs up-right, so the arrow rises. A character whose rising stroke stays inside the rightward sector is not in this pair.

Type strings that contain ㇀ and are not exactly that type

Hooks

Hook-bearing strokes, by the chord of the whole stroke

The same strokes, by the last curve

The gold arrow is the last curve, with the tip at the end of that curve. These two characters were chosen because a hook-bearing stroke ends upward, up-left, or up-right. The gold arrow is that finish. It is not the chord of the whole stroke.

Every type string

Stroke numbers, for checking against the file

Each row is one stroke of a plate character. Type, chord, last curve, start, and end are read from that stroke’s path. Coordinates are shown to two decimal places.