Formation rules of Chinese characters

"Liushu" refers to six basic formation rules of Chinese characters that were firstly summarized in the book "Shuowenjiezi" (Analytical Dictionary of Characters) by Xu Shen, a famous literateur and linguist who lived in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 BC).

In Liushu theory, four rules that define the formation of Chinese characters are the most important:
- pictographic
- indicative
- indicative compound
- pictophonetic compound
Among these, the first two apply to the characters of single structure while the other two to the characters of complex structure. The early Chinese characters that were carved on the animal bones were sketched pursuant to the forms of the objects which people saw or visualized logic. Thus, the first characters, mostly of single structure, were created in pictographic and indicative rules. To distinctly represent more concepts that were barely accomplished by mere pictures, many more characters were created later over time in other rules, such as indicative compound and pictophonetic compound, which give birth to characters of complex structure. The majority of Chinese characters in use nowadays belong to complex structure.

The foundation of Chinese characters are traditional version of characters that were created and used until the Republic of China (1949 as the last year). In middle 1950's, in order to popularize the literary of population, the simplied version of characters was introduced to people across mainland of China. In that process, some other customary rules were employed together with traditional  "Liushu" to form the characters in ubiquitous use nowadays in China mainland.

Illustrated below are the characters that demonstrate the application of each of the major formation rules:

---

Single Structure
- Pictographic

                    Script style evolution (diachronic):
                                   <Ancient>            <Transitional>  <Modern>
                         Oracle      Bronze    Seal    Clerical   Regular     Cursive         Print

  
   月
Moon

Crescent (the vertical stroke in the middle signifies the light)

  
    舟
 Boat

   羊
 Goat

Horns & Face of goat

---

Single Structure
- Indicative

                   Script style evolution (diachronic):
                                        <Ancient>          <Transitional>  <Modern>
                       Oracle     Bronze        Seal      Clerical  Regular    Cursive       Print

   上
  Up

   下
Down

    三
 Three

---

Complex Structure
- Indicative compound

                  Script style evolution (diachronic):
                                          <Ancient>                    <Transitional> <Modern>
                        Oracle              Bronze              Seal  Clerical Regular Cursive  Print

   酒
 Wine

Water

Pot

Wine

  
   明
Bright

Moon

Sun

Bright

 
   尘
 Dust

Oracle script: A running deer above and the particles of earth raised consequently beneanth

Seal script: evolution towards to modern regular script

尘：Modern simplied character. It consists of 小 and 土 that mean respectively small/tiny and earth

---

Complex Structure
- Pictophonetic compound

           Script style evolution (diachronic):
                                          <Ancient>            <Transitional>  <Modern>
                         Oracle           Bronze        Seal  Clerical Regular  Cursive       Print

   河
 River

"Water" implies the trait

It reads "Ke", approximate to "He", the pronunciation of River

River. It reads "He"