Basic components

It's the third post about Kanji. The first two are talking about Kanji origins and ways of learning. They can be found here and here.

I'm a big fan of structured learning. It's a term I'm using to describe learning things while breaking them into logical components until they are basic undividable pieces. When you start learning music, you start with the notes. When you start learning math, you start with the numbers. When you start learning Kanji, the first step is to learn basic strokes.

But why should we learn the types of strokes? We are not calligraphy painters. Well, yes. You are probably right, but the bigger understanding you'll have, the easier it will be to learn Kanji. The type of strokes in particularly, will help you memorize the right order of writing a Kanji.

Now lets start with the basics. To not overwhelm everyone and to keep going forward, I'll introduce 8 (+1) common strokes. They appear most frequently in Kanji and conveyed in one character which meaning is "forever" (yong - in Chinese). This character is used to demonstrate the "Eight principals of Yong" - explaining the way of writing eight common characters:

－ A dot, filled from the top, to the bottom.
－ A horizontal, filled from left to right.
－ A vertical-falling.
－ An ending to another stroke, is a sharp change of direction either down (after a ) or left (after a ).
－ A flick up and rightwards.
－  Follows a concave path on the left or on the right.
－ A falling leftwards (with a slight curve).
－ A falling rightwards (with an emphasis at the end of the stroke).
(+ － added to the 永's strokes. It's a concave falling right, always ended by a .

There is no need to memorize the names of the strokes, but it will be handy if you'll be able to recognize them in Kanji. If you are familiar with the stroke order principals, you'll easily follow the red numbers on the diagram and will be able to imagine the pen (or brash) writing this character.
If you feel enthusiastic enough, you can learn all the possible strokes here.