Three modes in one click — tracing sheets, tracing with pinyin grids, and a stroke-by-stroke build-up strip. Ready to print or export
Tianzige, Mizige, Huigong, nine-grid, plain square and no-grid layouts cover everything from stroke placement to free writing.
Tracing, tracing + pinyin, and a stroke-by-stroke build-up. The tracing modes put one character per row with the first cells as models and the rest blank to write in; the build-up mode shows the strokes one at a time above a row of a solid model plus pale grey characters to trace.
Tone-marked pinyin sits in an equal-width box above each cell; the build-up mode draws every stroke in sequence, one more per cell, so the writing order is easy to follow; the table adds stroke count, radical and structure.
Choose Kai, Song, Hei, Li or Yuan. Kai (regular script) is closest to the handwriting model taught in Chinese primary schools.
Paper size, orientation, cell size and margin are all measured in millimetres, so what you see is what the printer produces.
Layout, pinyin, stroke lookup and PNG export all run in the browser. Your text is never uploaded and no account is needed.
Choose a sheet mode first (tracing / tracing + pinyin / stroke-by-stroke build-up), then type or paste characters into the box on the left, or click a built-in preset such as Grade 1 characters or Quiet Night Thought. Tick Remove duplicates when your list repeats characters.
For beginners use Tianzige or Mizige; use Huigong or nine-grid to work on structure. Drag Traced model characters per row to decide how many cells show the model and how many stay blank. Switch to Free setup to adjust the line colour and cell style individually.
Choose a paper size and orientation, drag the cell-size slider to change how many characters fit per line, and switch pinyin, stroke counts and the header on or off.
The preview updates live; page through longer lists with Previous and Next. Click Print sheets to print every page, or Export PNG to save the current page at 300 DPI.
Paste the character list for the week and generate a pinyin-annotated Tianzige sheet in seconds instead of buying workbooks.
Produce one tracing sheet and one copy sheet per lesson, and check stroke counts and radicals straight from the character table.
Use Mizige to control the angle of diagonal strokes and Huigong to balance the centre of gravity, with Kai or Li as the model script.
Pinyin grids help learners link sound and shape; export a PNG and drop it straight into slides or study notes.
Turn names, poems or idioms into worksheets and print a week of handwriting practice in one go.
Use plain squares or nine-grid with the blank style to drill frequently used characters at your own pace.
A Chinese character is positioned by five references: above, below, left, right and centre. The Tianzige supplies the outer boundary plus a horizontal and a vertical centre line that split the square into four quadrants. Before writing, the learner decides which quadrant a stroke starts in and whether it sits on a centre line, which turns "looks roughly right" into "is in the right place". That is why Tianzige paper is standard in the early primary years.
Mizige keeps the Tianzige cross and adds both diagonals, giving eight guide lines. The angle of pie (falling left) and na (falling right) strokes can be compared directly against the diagonals, which is useful when correcting strokes that are too flat or too steep. Huigong nests a smaller square inside the outer one; the inner square marks the core area of the character and trains a centred, tight-inside, relaxed-outside structure, which helps with enclosed characters such as 国 and 回.
Handwriting practice usually moves through four stages: trace over a pale model, follow an outline, copy while looking at a model character, then write from memory. Tracing builds stroke order and muscle memory; outlining reinforces stroke direction; copying develops independent control; dictation removes the model entirely. The cell styles in this tool map directly onto those four levels so you can move a learner up as they improve.
Stroke order is the sequence in which the strokes of a character are written. The basic rules are: horizontal before vertical, falling-left before falling-right, top before bottom, left before right, outside before inside, middle before both sides, and the enclosing stroke last. Beginners often get the shape wrong not because they draw a stroke incorrectly but because they draw them in the wrong order. The stroke-by-stroke build-up mode draws every stroke in order, one extra stroke per cell with the newest one in red, so a learner can see exactly how a complex character is assembled — which builds the habit far faster than plain tracing.
The stroke count is the total number of strokes needed to write a character in the standard order, and it is used for dictionary lookup, sorting and exams. The radical is the classifying component used to index characters in a dictionary, and characters under the same radical often share a related meaning. The character table lists stroke count, radical and structural type (left-right, top-bottom, enclosure and so on) for every character on the sheet.
| Grid | Guide lines | Main purpose | Best stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tianzige 田字格 | Outer square + horizontal and vertical centre lines | Locate each stroke left, right, above or below the centre | Beginners and vocabulary drills |
| Mizige 米字格 | Outer square + cross + both diagonals | Control the angle of diagonal strokes | Correcting pie and na, balancing the frame |
| Huigong 回宫格 | Outer square + centred inner square + cross | Train the centre of gravity, tight inside and relaxed outside | Structure and proportion work |
| Nine-grid 九宫格 | Outer square divided into 3×3 cells | Plan the proportions of multi-part characters | Complex and compound characters |
| Square 方格 | Outer square only | Write a full page at a consistent size | Once the structure is learned |
| No grid 无格 | No guides | Simulate real writing conditions | Copying finished texts and dictation |
Rule of thumb: start with Tianzige or Mizige, use Huigong for structure, plain squares for whole passages and no grid for dictation.