Chinese characters

Chinese characters are special symbols used to write Chinese and other languages from places strongly influenced by Chinese culture, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. They are one of the oldest writing systems in the world, and they are still used today. Unlike the letters in the English alphabet, which represent sounds, Chinese characters usually represent meanings. To write most everyday words, you need about 2,000 to 3,000 different characters.

The first Chinese characters were carved on bones and shells over 3,000 years ago in a place called Anyang. Over time, these characters changed in shape and style. Today, there are two main types of characters: simplified characters, used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, and traditional characters, used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

People have found many ways to write these characters, from carving them into hard materials to using brushes, woodblocks, and computers. Even though some countries have switched to their own alphabets, Japanese people still use Chinese characters along with other writing forms.

Development

Further information: Proto-writing and History of writing

Chinese characters are one of only four writing systems that humans invented on their own. These writing systems started with simple pictures or signs that showed ideas. Over time, these pictures changed and became easier to write, so they didn’t always look like the things they represented. This helped people write more ideas and words.

To write more words, people used a clever trick: they used a picture for one word to stand for another word that sounded similar. This helped write words that couldn’t be drawn as pictures. This slow change from simple pictures to a writing system that could show spoken words took a very long time.

Classification

Main article: Chinese character classification

Chinese characters have been used in many writing systems throughout history. A writing system includes the symbols used, like characters or letters, and the rules for using them to write language. Chinese characters are logographs, meaning each character stands for a word or idea. They usually represent the smallest meaning units in Chinese, called morphemes, which are often one syllable long. Unlike letters in an alphabet, which stand for sounds, these characters show meaning directly.

The places where Chinese characters were used, called the Sinosphere, have long traditions of studying how these characters work. Most of this study started with a model from a dictionary called the Shuowen Jiezi, written in the 2nd century CE. Newer ways of looking at characters study how they are made, their shapes, and how they work in writing.

History

Further information: Chinese script styles and History of the Chinese language

Chinese characters have changed a lot over time, mainly by getting simpler in shape and style. Instead of appearing all at once, these changes happened slowly, with many different writing styles existing together in the same places.

Traditional invention narrative

Some old Chinese books talk about using knotted cords to keep records before writing was invented. One story says that a man named Cangjie created Chinese characters around the year 3000 BCE. He got ideas from watching animals, landscapes, and stars. When he made the first characters, it’s said that grain fell from the sky, and people heard ghosts crying because humans could no longer be tricked.

Neolithic precursors

Main article: Neolithic symbols in China

Archaeologists have found collections of drawings and symbols at old settlements along the Yellow River, like Jiahu (around 6500 BCE), Dadiwan and Damaidi (6th millennium BCE), and Banpo (5th millennium BCE). These symbols were drawn on objects, but they don’t seem to be a full writing system. Some symbols from a later culture called Dawenkou (around 4300–2600 BCE) look similar to early Chinese characters, but they are still just early signs, not true writing.

Oracle bone script

Main article: Oracle bone script

The oldest known Chinese writing comes from around 1250–1050 BCE, during the Late Shang period. These writings were carved on ox shoulder bones or turtle shells, called “oracle bones,” and used for asking questions about the future. The carvings were discovered in 1899 and traced back to a village near Anyang in Henan, which was the last capital of the Shang dynasty.

Zhou scripts

See also: Chinese bronze inscriptions, Bamboo and wooden slips, and Seal script

During the Shang dynasty, besides the oracle bone script, there were simpler forms used on bamboo and more detailed pictures used on family symbols. These simpler forms were used on bronze containers made in clay molds, creating a style called bronze script.

Qin unification and small seal script

Main article: Small seal script

After Qin united China in 221 BCE, a form of writing called small seal script was made the standard across the whole country. Before this, people in Qin had used several different writing styles.

Clerical script

Main article: Clerical script

Around 475–221 BCE, during the Warring States period, a new style of writing called clerical script began to develop. It became more common and simpler during the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), making it easier to write every day.

Cursive and semi-cursive

Cursive script started as early as 24 BCE, mixing simpler writing styles with quick, flowing brush strokes. A style called semi-cursive script also developed from this, often used in everyday handwriting.

Regular script

Main article: Regular script

Regular script is the most common way Chinese characters are written and printed today. It grew from clerical and semi-cursive styles and was developed further during the Eastern Jin period. Regular script became the main style used in important writing during the Northern and Southern period and was required for civil service exams starting in the Sui dynasty (581–618).

Structure

Each Chinese character is written inside a square space. Over time, the way characters are written changed, and the strokes became organized into groups. There are eight basic stroke types, and writers often practice using the character 永 ("eternity") to learn them. In everyday writing, five main stroke types are used.

Characters are built in specific patterns. Some parts change shape depending on where they appear in the character. The order for drawing these parts is set, usually from left to right and top to bottom. For example, the character 永 is drawn in a special sequence.

Variant characters

Main article: Variant Chinese characters

Over time, characters can have different forms but still mean the same thing. These are like different ways to write the same letter. Variants can appear for beauty, ease of writing, or to fix mistakes. Sometimes parts of a character are swapped for similar-looking or sounding pieces. It can be hard to tell if these are different characters or just different ways to write the same one.

For example, the character for "bright" was once written in different ways. One used the word for "sun," and another used "window." Later, a new form with "eye" appeared. Today, one way has become the standard.

Layout

Further information: Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts

See also: Chinese punctuation, Japanese punctuation, and Korean punctuation

For a long time, Chinese writing was done vertically, with characters going from top to bottom in columns, moving from right to left. Horizontal writing, from left to right across rows, became common in the 20th century due to Western influence. Many places outside China still use the vertical style. Punctuation became common in printed text during the 19th and 20th centuries, even though earlier texts relied on context to make sense because characters are easy to read without spaces or punctuation.

Methods of writing

The earliest Chinese characters were carved into bone or marked in clay for making metal tools. Characters were also cut into stone or written with ink on silk, wood, and bamboo. The invention of paper during the 1st century CE made writing easier, and this invention is linked to Cai Lun. There are many ways to write characters, called scripts, such as seal script and clerical script. Most of these styles started in China but may look a little different in other places. Some styles created outside China, like the Japanese edomoji and Vietnamese lệnh thư, are mostly used only there.

Main article: Chinese calligraphy

Calligraphy is an art form where people write characters beautifully using an ink brush. It is not about perfect shapes but about expressing ideas in a free and artistic way. Calligraphers think about balance, like how fast or slow to write strokes, how much ink to use, and whether characters look the same or different.

Further information: History of printing in East Asia and East Asian typography

Woodblock printing started in China between the 6th and 9th centuries, and later, moveable type was invented by Bi Sheng in the 11th century. As printing became more common during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the shapes of characters became more standardized. Printed characters use different styles, or typefaces, which include Song or Ming styles that are like Western serif fonts, sans-serif styles called black form in Chinese and Gothic in Japanese, Kai styles that look like handwritten script, and Fangsong styles that are like semi-script forms.

Main article: Chinese character information technology

Before computers, machines like telegraphs and typewriters were made for alphabets, not for thousands of Chinese characters. Adapting them was difficult.

Further information: Chinese input method and Japanese input method

Today, Chinese characters are mainly typed on computers using a regular keyboard. Many ways to input characters are based on sounds, like pinyin for Mandarin or Jyutping for Cantonese. For example, 香港 ("Hong Kong") might be typed as xiang1gang3 in pinyin or hoeng1gong2 in Jyutping. Other methods use the shape of the characters, like Wubi in mainland China or Cangjie in Taiwan and Hong Kong. These methods can make typing faster by using rules to simplify the character shapes.

Main article: Chinese character encoding

See also: Han unification

Unicode is the most common way to store text today. It gives each Chinese character a unique number. In Unicode’s Basic Multilingual Plane, there are spaces for over 20,000 characters used in Chinese writing. As of version 17.0 in 2025, Unicode includes over 100,000 Chinese characters.

Vocabulary and adaptation

Further information: Chinese family of scripts and Adoption of Chinese literary culture

Writing began during the time called Old Chinese. Most symbols matched words that stood alone in Old Chinese. Classical Chinese is the form of writing used in Chinese books and literature from about the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Later writers copied this style, even as the spoken language changed. This older writing style stayed important in China until the 20th century. It was also used in places like Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. These areas used it much like Europe used Latin long ago. Over time, the writing changed to fit local spoken languages.

As time passed, this writing style was used to write many languages spoken around China. New symbols were made to write both local words and words borrowed from Chinese. By the 15th century, a special way to write Vietnamese called chữ Nôm had fully developed. Writing came to Korea as early as the 2nd century BCE and reached Japan by the 5th century CE. By the late 20th century, writing systems using symbols were mostly replaced by alphabets in Vietnam and Korea, but Japan still uses them often.

Literacy and lexicography

Further information: Chinese character education and Literacy in China

Learning to read languages written with Chinese characters means memorizing thousands of different symbols, unlike learning languages that use sounds to represent letters. In the past, books like the Thousand Character Classic and Three Character Classic helped people learn these characters. Today, people usually know about three to four thousand characters well, and experts might know even more.

Dictionaries

Main article: Chinese dictionary

There are about 15,000 characters in use today. Dictionaries arrange these characters in different ways—by their meaning, shape, or sound. One old dictionary, the Erya, grouped characters by meaning into sections. Another, the Shuowen Jiezi, started a common method using parts of characters called radicals. Modern dictionaries might list characters alphabetically by their pinyin spelling but still include the old radical method for finding characters. Before using letters to show sounds, old books used a special method called fanqie to show how characters sounded.

Neurolinguistics

Scientists have studied how the brain works when reading characters. Reading characters uses more parts of the brain than reading letters, especially areas for seeing. Even though remembering many characters is hard, knowing parts of characters that show sounds and meanings helps with reading. How easy it is to recognize a character depends on how its parts are arranged and how well a part shows a sound. Because many words sound similar in Chinese, knowing how characters are written helps with understanding speech.

Reform and standardization

Attempts to make and agree on the use of Chinese characters have happened for a long time. Governments have worked to change how characters look, how they are written, and how they sound.

In the 1950s and 1960s, China made many characters simpler and easier to write. Japan also made some characters simpler after World War II. Some characters keep their old shapes and are called traditional characters.

Different places use different kinds of characters. China, Malaysia, and Singapore use the simpler characters. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau use the traditional characters. Readers in China and Japan can usually understand characters from all these groups.

Before the 1900s, changes to characters were small. But later, many people thought the writing system needed to change to help everyone learn to read and write easily. Some suggested using a new way to write with letters instead of characters. In 1911, a big change happened in China, and new ways of writing began to be discussed.

After 1949, China made big changes to simplify characters. They made a list of simpler characters in 1956 and again in 1964. Some characters were made much simpler, and some were combined together. In 1977, China tried another set of simplifications, but people did not like it, so it was stopped in 1986.

Japan also made changes after World War II. They made some characters simpler and created lists of characters that students should learn each year. In 2010, Japan added more characters to their list.

In South Korea, characters are still used sometimes, but most writing uses the Korean alphabet. Students learn some characters, especially for reading newspapers and place names.

North Korea mostly stopped using characters by 1949, but students still learn some for school.

Taiwan published a list of traditional characters in 1982. Singapore has also made its own sets of simplified characters, following changes made in China. Hong Kong uses traditional characters in schools.