Stroke Order
Chinese characters are constructed with a set of fixed rules. The methods were designed for you to minimise the hand movement to write the most strokes. When you learn Chinese, it is useful to learn the basic principles and the stroke order, because they make it easier and more effective to write the characters. After you practise writing for a while, it will become your second nature to write them in the correct order.
Top to Bottom and Left to Right
As a general rule, Chinese characters are written from top to bottom and left to right. For example: the character for “two” has two strokes 二 (èr), we write the top stroke first and then we write the bottom stroke; both strokes are written from left to right. The character for “three” has three strokes 三 (sān), again we write from top to bottom and each stroke is written from left to right.
A character can contain two or more components. When this is the case, the same rule applies to the composition of the components.
For example:
妈 (mā - mother) is made up of two components 女 (nǚ - woman) and 马 (mǎ - horse) putting together side by side. We write the whole of the left component 女 before the right component 马.
星 (xīng - star) is the combination of two components 日 (rì - sun) and 生 (shēng - to be born). We usually write the top component as a whole and move on to write the bottom component. In this case, 日 is the top component which is written before 生 being the bottom component. When we write the component, we use the same rule to write from top to bottom and left to right.
The below diagram shows the stroke order for 星.
Click the below button for more information on different strokes and stroke orders.