I’m trying to learn chinese on duolingo, and as I’m learning characters I try to write them down with the correct stroke order to help me memorize them.
I read the wikipedia article on stroke order, but there seems to be tons of exceptions and counter-intuitive stuff like the eighth stroke of “很” coming before the ninth stroke it connects to, or the order of strokes in the first radical of “忙” or whether or not “minor strokes” (丶) actually go last, etc.
Is there anyway to get better at telling what the stroke orders are, or do I just have to look it up for each character? Does it matter that much if I deviate from the standard stroke order as long as I follow the correct rules?
I’m not trying to be a calligrapher, I just want to be able to write legibly and remember what the characters are.
I would keep looking up the stroke order for each character as you learn them. You will catch on to the rules pretty quickly. After 1 - 2 weeks I was able to guess the stroke order for most new characters I learned, especially once you know the stroke order of the most common radicals. In my intro course we didn't really go over the specific rules either, just learning by doing. And my teacher always emphasised that if you want to write legibly you should never deviate from the stroke order.