Ordering kin

Hangul, assembled in a square

A Hangul syllable is a block with assigned places, not a row of letters.

The Unicode Standard, version 17.0, describes Hangul in two places that this page uses. Section 18.6 says the letters, called jamo, are visually combined into square cells, and that a modern syllable block is a leading consonant plus a vowel, or those two plus a trailing consonant: choseong, jungseong, and an optional jongseong. Section 3.12 defines a standard Korean syllable block as a sequence of one or more leading consonants, then one or more vowels, then zero or more trailing consonants. In modern Korean, a choseong, a jungseong, and a jongseong are each a single jamo.

Where the vowel sits is fixed by shape, and the statement is older than the encoding. 이동석 (2016), in the article 모아쓰기 of the 한국민족문화대백과사전, quotes the Hunminjeongeum. The vowels ㆍㅡㅗㅜㅛㅠ are attached below the initial. The vowels ㅣㅏㅓㅑㅕ are attached to its right. The same article quotes the 합자해: initial, medial, and final combine to make the character, and the initial stands above the medial or to its left. The article’s own contrast is with 풀어쓰기, the lining up of the same jamo in a row, as ㄱㅗㅁ against the block 곰.

The strokes inside a jamo are not numbered here. These sources describe the assembly of the block. They do not state a pen order for ㄱ or for any other letter, so none is drawn.

The 国 plate draws in that file’s order. Click it to replay. With reduced motion the finished character stays still.

What this shows about kanji is the split between a row of parts and a placed result. The block you read is not the jamo lined up. The places do not commute: the article assigns the initial a seat above the medial or to its left, and it assigns the vowel a seat that depends on which vowel it is. Swapping those seats is not the assembly described there. A kanji character is that kind of placed result. Where the placement is an enclosing frame, the rules page writes the frame open, then the contents, then the close. Hangul is not that frame, and it is not a theory of the character.

Latin handwriting, and the ductus

The ductus is the order of the trace. The letter a reader names is the finished trace, and the two are not the same fact.

In the French primary materials, ductus is a defined word for cursive. The 2025 Éduscol booklet that accompanies the programme says, in a footnote, that the ductus of cursive letters is the order and the direction, and also the speed and the rhythm, with which one traces the strokes that compose the letter (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, 2025, note 6).

A 2015 Éduscol guide on the shape of letters uses the word in two ways. For roman capitals, it is not necessary to impose a particular ductus; what matters is that the letters stay recognizable. For cursive, the ductus is to be respected, so that the forms and the ligatures between letters are easier. The round part of a, c, d, g, o, q is traced in a leftward rotation, from a point at the top of the form and far enough to the right. The guide gives the 2 on a clock as one way to find that point. Those round letters have no entry stroke. The same guide, quoting the 2013 models document of the Direction générale de l’enseignement scolaire (p. 5), says that recognition of letters passes as much by memory of the gesture as by visual memory.

The ministry text itself lets the path and the recognizable letter part, for capitals: the path need not be the one thing fixed, if the letter remains readable. Kanji school order is that kind of split. The rules page records the 1958 handbook’s statement that one order is fixed for teaching, and that other customary orders are not thereby wrong. For cursive Latin, the prescribed path is also what the next letter joins to. On this site, the strokes a 行書 join runs together are the ones the regular order has made neighbors, on Cursive as compressed order. Latin ductus is not an account of that join.

Arabic, where the neighbor changes the letter

The form is not fixed by the letter alone. The sequence of neighbors decides it, so the order does not commute.

The Unicode Standard, version 17.0, §9.2, says the Arabic script is cursive even in print. The same letter may be written in different forms depending on how it joins with its neighbors. The script is written from right to left. Each letter has one character, however many shapes it takes, and a word is a sequence of those letters. The glyph in the code chart is usually the form the letter has when it stands by itself.

Which shape is used is a joining rule, stated for visual order. A dual-joining letter has four forms: isolated, final, medial, and initial. Beh is the standard’s example, and teh and theh are in that group. A right-joining letter has two forms, isolated and final. The standard’s examples include alef, dal, thal, reh, and zain. Right and left in these rules are visual: a right-joining value means the letter joins the one displayed to its right. A dual-joining letter takes the right-joining form when a character that causes a join stands on its right and none stands on its left, and the left-joining form when that character stands on its left and none stands on its right.

The word you read is not a row of the standalone letters. A neighbor on the other side is a different rule, initial against final, not the same shape moved. That is the ordered realization against the finished form, and it does not commute. Kanji shows the same split where strokes meet or cross. Where the parts do not touch, the rules page notes that the printed result can look the same if the halves are swapped. Arabic is the case in which the neighbor changes the shape itself. The comparison stops there. The two scripts are not one system.

Mainland stroke order, already compared

Chinese 笔顺, where the mainland order and the Japanese school order of one glyph are not the same sequence, is already Japan vs China. This page does not repeat those sequences. What that page shows, and what belongs with the kin, is that one finished glyph can be given more than one official order. The form and the order of realization are not the same fact.