Hong Kong Standard Character Forms (常用字字形表) Explained
What Hong Kong’s List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters is, why HK, Taiwan and mainland glyphs differ slightly, and what it means for students and typists.
Key takeaways
- Hong Kong schools follow the List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters (常用字字形表), which sets standard forms for about 4,700 common characters.
- Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China all use standards, and even Traditional forms differ slightly between Hong Kong and Taiwan.
- Typical Hong Kong preferences include 裏 (Taiwan 裡), 着 (Taiwan 著) and 衞 (Taiwan 衛).
- About 4,800 characters in our dictionary are flagged by Unicode as Hong Kong common-glyph characters.
What the list is for
Handwritten characters naturally vary: a dot may become a short stroke, or two strokes may touch or not. For teaching and assessment, schools need one agreed form. Hong Kong’s List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters provides that standard for primary and secondary education, specifying the shape, component forms and stroke counts of common characters.
Unicode records which characters are in the list through the Unihan kHKGlyph field. Our Hong Kong primary school character lists and dictionary rankings use this information.
Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland forms
All three regions have official standards, and they differ in three ways.
Choice of character. Where two Traditional forms exist, regions may prefer different ones:
| Hong Kong | Taiwan | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 裏 | 裡 | inside |
| 着 | 著 | particle / wear |
| 衞 | 衛 | guard, defend |
Component shapes. Small differences in how a component is written, such as whether strokes connect, which can change the stroke count of some components.
Simplified vs Traditional. Mainland China uses Simplified forms for most characters that have them. See Traditional vs Simplified.
What it means in practice
- Students should follow the forms in their textbooks, which are based on the list, especially for dictation (默書) and exams.
- Typists will find that fonts differ: a Taiwan-standard font and a Hong Kong-standard font can draw the same code point slightly differently. For documents intended for Hong Kong readers, choose a Hong Kong font (for example fonts labelled HK) where available.
- Converters offer a Hong Kong variant option for this reason; our converter includes Simplified → Traditional (Hong Kong).
Stroke order
Stroke order standards also differ between regions for some characters. Our animations use mainland-standard data, so check your textbook where a character’s order looks different. Read more in stroke order rules.
Related guides
Traditional vs Simplified
Where Simplified characters came from, the six main ways characters were simplified, who uses each script, and the one-to-many traps that break automatic conversion.
Stroke order rules
The core rules that decide the order of strokes in almost every Chinese character, with examples, exceptions and why stroke order matters.
Helping children with dictation
Research-informed, practical techniques for parents to help children remember Chinese characters: components and stories, spaced practice, active recall and a stress-free dictation week plan.
Most common characters
The most frequent Traditional Chinese characters in order, with Cangjie and Quick codes, and how many characters you actually need to read everyday Chinese.