Why is stroke order important?


While I understand that stroke order is important, I do not understand why it
is important. If the final product would look the same, why does it matter? I
don't have an issue following stroke order. I'm just curious.




Stroke order is important for hand-written Japanese, which includes normal
handwriting and various styles of calligraphy.

The stroke order gives a flow to the character that can be recognized, even
when the character looks very different to its [楷書]{かいしょ} incarnation.

For the non-expert, a character written in 楷書 (in the correct order) probably
cannot be distinguished from the same character with a different stroke order.
But as soon as you get into cursive styles, the difference of the same
character with different stroke orders becomes very obvious.

![書道](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PL6qm.jpg)

If the author of the [玉泉帖]{ぎょくせんじょう} above had written like he did, but with a
random stroke order, probably nobody would be able to actually read it.




Stroke order is important for hand-written Japanese, which includes normal
handwriting and various styles of calligraphy.

The stroke order gives a flow to the character that can be recognized, even
when the character looks very different to its [楷書]{かいしょ} incarnation.

For the non-expert, a character written in 楷書 (in the correct order) probably
cannot be distinguished from the same character with a different stroke order.
But as soon as you get into cursive styles, the difference of the same
character with different stroke orders becomes very obvious.

![書道](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PL6qm.jpg)

If the author of the [玉泉帖]{ぎょくせんじょう} above had written like he did, but with a
random stroke order, probably nobody would be able to actually read it.

