The next basic stroke is most often called diǎn, but it's sometimes called zhu. No matter how it's pronounced, the name of this stroke means "dot" or "point," indicating a short diagonal top-to-bottom stroke:

As you can see, the diǎn stroke can be drawn in either direction, either down to the left or down to the right, depending on the character you're writing.

For example, adding a diǎn stroke to the top of the 王 character transforms this king to a mere lord, or property owner:

In contrast, placing a diǎn stroke inside the 王 character changes its meaning to something valuable in the king's possession – namely, jade:

And when you place this valuable item inside a box, you change the meaning of the resulting character once again:

Here's another character that includes a diǎn stroke, followed by a variety of the other strokes you know. In this case, the top héng stroke is longer than the others, which are both the same width as the box below it.

And here's another character that includes a slightly longer diǎn character:

Here's a character that starts with a diǎn stroke and a héng stroke, then incorporates a shù zhé stroke:

The next character has not just one but three diǎn strokes. Notice how the left side of this character incorporates all three strokes from previous character:

To finish up, here's a character that starts with 占 (pronounced zhan in Mandarin), which you learned in the previous section, and includes four diǎn strokes in a very specific sequence: left, right, right, and right:

This configuration of four diǎn strokes at the bottom of a character is common to a variety of Chinese characters. I'll discuss this further in Chapter 8 when I talk about radicals. For now, just notice it.

As you'll see as you continue to study Chinese writing, many complex hànzi characters incorporate simpler ones as part of their structure. But as you begin to recognize how complex characters are usually composed of simpler ones, you'll find them much easier to remember and write.