> There is a formal, correct way to write characters, and common "cursive" doesn't follow it. There are political attempts to formalize how to write character

> There is a formal, correct way to write characters, and common "cursive" doesn't follow it. There are political attempts to formalize how to write characters, but there is no one correct way, only more common ways and less common ways. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_order#Stroke_order_per_polity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_order#Stroke_order_per_... shows how a very common character is standardized to be written in different stroke orders. On to strokes themselves, you can see for example that there are multiple ways to correctly write the word for tiger even though standardizations has blessed one particular form: This is a standard way: http://www.sfzd.cn/gq/3/16/1/1671084904a28_170_0179b.jpg http://www.sfzd.cn/gq/3/16/1/1671084904a28_170_0179b.jpg But important authors have written it in this manner: http://www.sfzd.cn/gq/2/14/1/1669634829a4_919_396.jpg http://www.sfzd.cn/gq/2/14/1/1669634829a4_919_396.jpg and you frequently see this manner of writing in New Year calligraphy More examples: historically we have a character most commonly written 䖏, but standardized as (simplified) (CN) 处, (JP) 処, (HK/TW traditional) 處. Historically, 侯 was frequently written like 隹 with diagonal /\ at the bottom as in https://www.shufazidian.com/gq/1/8/46115.jpg https://www.shufazidian.com/gq/1/8/46115.jpg . Sometimes Chinese pedagogy has an air of "one stroke order", "one correct way", but this situation is a lot like with mcdojos where there are multiple idio-traditions that tend to think that they are an authority.