Stroke counts/orders for 馬 and 鳥

[Gharial]

Does anybody else here write 馬 as - - - l szzg* .... ? Making it 9 strokes rather than the usual 10. And by analogy with not only the 馬 9 stroke order-count just given, but also 马 and the simplified stroke order for 鸟 ( / ¬ ` szzg - ), does anybody write 鳥 as / ¬ - - - szzg .... i.e. as 10 rather than the standard 11 strokes?

*szzg refers to the stroke listed on page 8 here: http://www.wenlin.co..._2004_05_23.pdf .

[jfmario]

I've only written that in 10 strokes, but I never thought to do otherwise.

[skylee]

I do write 馬 in 9 strokes, ie hhshszzg .... I have checked the HK Govt website and the TW MOE website on stroke order, and my stroke order is obviously not standard. The two websites' stroke orders are different but both list 10 strokes.

I write 鳥 in 11 strokes as listed in those websites. I guess with 鳥 it is more difficult to make the word look good without writing the vertical stroke first.

[Glenn]

Wow. I write 鳥 the same way it's shown both places, but not 馬. I write that one differently from both:

http://kakijun.main.jp/page/uma200.html

Not much of a consensus on that one, eh?

[Gharial]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not sure where I picked up the 9-stroke way of writing 馬 - perhaps from the full-form version of the Character Text for Colloquial Chinese by P.C.T'ung, which certainly appears to draw it that way, rather than in any of the ways given in the above sites dealing with HK, Taiwanese and Japanese standards. (Note however that the apparent szzg T'ung uses in 馬 isn't carried over into the way he writes 鳥, which he gives as 11 strokes i.e. as / l ¬ - - - hzg .... . So any possible szzg in 鳥 too is just mere speculation on my part only!). Anyway, those two radical-characters sometimes throw me a bit when I'm using traditional dictionaries and re-establishing (by drawing them with my finger) that they have 9 and 10...dangit, 10 and 11 strokes respectively! (What can I say? I guess I'm just a szzg kind of guy!).