Stroke was defined as the smallest unit that constitutes the shape of Chinese characters, the dot or the line written from the start to the end during the writing process in modern Chinese graphology. According to the definition, stroke is the result of static analysis of the glyph structure, but there is no identification mark for the minimum unit, the confirmation of strokes has to rely on the dynamic analysis of the writing process, as a result, grammatology and the study of calligraphy art were mixed up. However, the writing practice showed that from the startto theend of writing, the smallest unit and stroke, there are not equivalent between every two of them. The wrong concept of strokes led to many deviations in the series of problems such as confirmation, classification and naming of strokes. Modern Chinese graphology follows the concept of once writing into one stroke proposed by Mei Yingzuo in the Ming Dynasty and the practice of mixing calligraphy strokes and retrieving strokes.
For decades, the newly constructed stroke system has emerged endlessly, but none of them conformed to the grammatical principle. Based on the analysis of the features of Chinese characters, this paper defines strokes as fragments identified by endpoints in the glyphs and constructs the “nine-stroke system” according to shapes and directions of strokes, including
three categories and nine kinds of strokes such as line font, corniform an punctiform. And at last, this article concludes with a description of the relationship between the “nine-stroke system” and the existing stroke systems.
