The Eight Principles of Yong are used by calligraphers to practice how to write the eight most common strokes in regular script, using the fact that they are all present in the character . It was believed that the frequent practice of these principles as such when beginning one's study could ensure beauty in the Chinese calligrapher's writing.
The Eight Principles are influenced by the Eastern Jin-era Seven Powers () by Lady Wei Shuo. Publications on the principles include: The Tang-era Praise to the Eight Principles of "Yong" () by Liu Zongyuan The Tang-era Praise to the Eight Principles of "Yong" () by Yan Zhenqing The Yuan-era Eight Ways to Explain "Yong" () by Li Puguang, which provides two-character metaphorical names
Table + principles (stroke components) by stroke order Principle Pinyin abbr. Name Additional description Tang-era Li Modern Chinese Vietnamese 1 D Tiny dash, speck 2 H Rightward 3 S Downward 4 G Appended to others, suddenly going down, or left only 5 T Flick up and rightwards 6 W Tapering thinning curve, usually concave left (convex outward right) with fast speed as if skimming 7 P Falling leftwards with light curve 8 N Falling rightwards, fattening at bottom, where endpoint is "sharp as a knife"
CJK strokes
In addition to these eight common strokes in , there are at least two dozen strokes of combinations which enter in the composition of CJK strokes and by inclusion the CJK characters themselves. Most strokes are encoded in Unicode as symbols, to be used in ideographic description sequences (IDS). The standard characters names assigned in the UCS for these CJK strokes are based on initials of the modern Chinese names (romanized with Pinyin) of component principles with which they are recognized and drawn.
Gallery
See also CJK characters CJK strokes
References