Ordering phenomenon · where a stroke starts
Kanji Morphology

Stroke order · ordered realization

筆順 · where the pen is put down

Stroke-start position and order

Where in the 109 square each stroke begins, as a function of its rank k/n, and how often the next start lies above and to the left of the one before it.

These are frequencies in one KanjiVG snapshot. A position is a coordinate in that file. It does not say that the order is the one a hand must use.

On this page

How a start is read

Start
Rank
Tenth
First, middle, last
Above-left
Upper-left of center

Mean start by rank tenth

  • Mean start x
  • Mean start y
Rank tenth Strokes Mean x Mean y Median x Median y

First, middle, and last

Stroke Characters Mean x Mean y Median x Median y Upper-left of center

Stroke 1

Row 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The middle stroke

Row 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The last stroke

Row 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Above and to the left

Next start To the left Same x To the right

Each cell is a count of later strokes. Higher is a smaller y. Left is a smaller x. The cell at higher and to the left is the above-left count.

Rank tenth Later strokes Above-left Share

Six characters

Stroke 1, the middle stroke, and the last stroke

Coordinates are hundredths of the KanjiVG square. The origin is the top left, and y grows downward. For 一, stroke 1 and the last stroke are the same stroke, and there is no middle stroke.

Character Strokes Stroke 1 x Stroke 1 y Middle Middle x Middle y Last x Last y Above-left

Click a plate to replay. With reduced motion the finished character stays still. A mark appears at the start of each stroke as that stroke is drawn, and it stays. The mark just drawn is indigo. Earlier starts stay cinnabar. The mark uses the stored coordinates, each rounded to a hundredth.

  • Start of a stroke already drawn
  • Start of the stroke just drawn

KanjiVG · CC BY-SA 3.0

What this shows

Stroke diagrams: KanjiVG, Ulrich Apel et al., CC BY-SA 3.0, from commit 70a0b7ae0c18ceb5cb358274b029cce0234a43bc of github.com/KanjiVG/kanjivg. The plate files are unmodified copies in site/assets/kanjivg/. Jōyō index: the list used on the Gallery.