Xíngshū — running script
What running script adds — filaments, fused strokes, axis — and what it is not allowed to take away.
之 in running script: what the 牵丝 is allowed to carry
之 is three strokes in regular script and looks like one gesture in running script — but the change is not simply speed. Running script adds a filament (牵丝) between strokes that must be thinner than any real stroke, and 之 is the shortest possible place to learn where that filament belongs and where it does not.
The three-dot water radical in running script: two strokes, one gesture
In regular script 氵 is three separate marks. Running script reduces it to two — the second and third dots fuse into a single stroke that ends in the rising 提 — and the radical then hands its energy to the right-hand component through the tip of that rise. 江 is the standard demonstration: the left radical and 工 are joined by a single contact point.
田字格 row sheet: practising 行气 instead of single characters
Running script is not judged character by character — it is judged line by line. This sheet drops the diagonals of the 米字格 and keeps only a single vertical division, so that nothing in the grid competes with the horizontal rhythm you are trying to learn. Eight columns wide, five rows deep: each row is one phrase, written in one breath.
心 in running script: what a stroke is allowed to lose
心 contains the hardest single stroke in Chinese writing — the 卧钩, a hook that lies down — and running script solves it by re-drawing the character's economy: the left dot turns into a stub of vertical, the two right-hand dots drift onto a single filament, and the hook keeps every bit of its difficulty. This page is about which savings are legitimate.