笔顺规则
Stroke-order rules

从第一课起你就在写“你好”。写“好”的时候，你的笔一定是先写左边的“女”，再写右边的“子”——没有人先写“子”。第七级我们给笔画起了名字：横、竖、撇、捺、折。这一课把你早就在用的顺序说清楚：一共五条，每一条你都见过。

You have been writing 你好 since your first lesson, and your pen has always put the 女 on the left of 好 before the 子 on the right — nobody does it the other way round. Level 7 gave the strokes their names: 横 héng, 竖 shù, 撇 piě, 捺 nà, 折 zhé. This lesson writes down the order your hand already follows. There are five rules, and you have met every one of them.

这两条是大方向，别的规则都在它们里面做小调整。一个字分成上下两块，先写上面那块；分成左右两块，先写左边那块。“谢”有三块，也是从左到右：讠、身、寸。

These two are the frame; every other rule is a local adjustment inside it. If a character splits into a top and a bottom, the top goes first; if it splits left and right, the left goes first. 谢 has three parts and takes them straight across: 讠, then 身, then 寸.

“木”一个字里就有这两条：先横，再竖，然后撇，最后捺，四画写完。你要是先写竖，字还认得出来，可是笔画数会数错，查字典就找不到了。

One character, 木, uses both: héng, shù, piě, nà — four strokes in that order. Write the vertical first and the character still looks right, but you will miscount its strokes, and a lookup by stroke count will fail.

记住最后那一笔：门先开着，东西放进去，然后才关上。这条规则很好检查——写完以后看一看，封口的那一横是不是你最后写的？

Remember the last stroke: the door stays open, the contents go in, and only then does it shut. It is an easy rule to check — when you finish, ask whether the closing stroke really was the last one you made.