The Stroke Count Method (

simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

: 笔画;

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

: bǐ huà), ''Wubihua method'', ''Stroke input method'' or ''Bihua IME'' ( or ) (lit. ''5-stroke input method'') is a relatively simple Chinese input method for writing text on a computer or a mobile phone. It is based on the

stroke order Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese ...

of a word, not pronunciation. It uses five or six buttons, and is often placed on a numerical keypad. Although it is possible to input

Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took at ...

with this method, this method is often associated with

Simplified Chinese characters Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, as prescribed by the ''Table of General Standard Chinese Characters''. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one o ...

. The Wubihua method should not be confused with the

Wubi method The Wubizixing input method (), often abbreviated to simply Wubi or Wubi Xing,This is the name used in Mac OS X is a Chinese character input method primarily for inputting simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese text on a computer. Wubi s ...

. Each of the five keys from 1 to 5 are assigned a certain type of stroke (resembling the

Eight Principles of Yong The Eight Principles of ''Yong'' (; ja, 永字八法/えいじはっぽう, ''eiji happō''; ko, 영자팔법/永字八法, ''Yeongjapalbeop''; vi, Vĩnh tự bát pháp) explain how to write eight common Stroke (Chinese character), strokes i ...

; these five are sometimes called (''héng-shù-piē-nà-zhé'') with each character of this phrase being a one-syllable description of the respective five strokes: # A horizontal stroke from left to right (一) # A vertical stroke from top to bottom (丨) # A long diagonal stroke downward from right to left (丿) # A very short dash stroke downward from left to right (丶) # A horizontal stroke from left to right, ending with a downwards hook to the left (乙) To input any character, the user simply presses the keys corresponding to the strokes of a character then select from a list of matching characters. The list of suggestions to choose from becomes more and more specific as more digits of the code are entered. The system will not recognize a character input with an incorrect stroke order. Some people find this method of entering characters into a mobile phone to be faster than pinyin. In fact, as pinyin is based upon

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

, many Chinese people – particularly in the southern regions of China like Hong Kong and

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

– who speak other varieties of Chinese and never learned pinyin relied solely on this method of entering characters on their phones, until touchscreen-based

Smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s allowed the possibility of

Handwriting recognition Handwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other dev ...

. Wubihua is one of the easiest to learn methods because it is simple and does not require knowledge of pronunciation or

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

. However, it tends to be vague, as a Wubihua code will normally match ten characters, and each character has one correct code, which confuses users whose stroke orders are wrong. Strokes map to Wubihua input generally according to the following table:

Notes

References

External links

Wubihua For Speakers of English

Thesis on chinese language processing and computing – Wubihua
Han character input {{writingsystem-stub

See also

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References

External links