The Chinese character 永 ( yǒng ), meaning “forever” or “permanence”, is often used to illustrate the 8 basic principles used to draw strokes that compose ideographic characters.

• This is a visualisation of the 8 principles used in writing Hanzi, Kanji, Kana, Hantu, and Hanja characters.
• The names of principles are: 1 点/點 diǎn ; 2 横/橫 héng ; 3 竖/豎 shù ; 4 钩/鉤 gōu ; 5 提 tí ; 6 弯/彎 wān ; 7 撇 piě ; 8 捺 nà .
• The orders of each principles used to write the above character is given, but note that the character shown in fact has 5 strokes , composed of 8 principles : this is illustrated in the 8 principles orders. A plus sign (+) indicates where this occurs; for instance, the successive drawings of three (“2+”, “+3+” and “+4”) or two (“5+” and “+6”) of the eight principles each compose a single written stroke (where the pen does not leave the paper).