# Chinese whole characters

A Chinese whole character, or whole Chinese character (simplified Chinese: 汉字整字; traditional Chinese: 漢字整字; pinyin: hànzì zhěngzì), is a complete Chinese character. It lies at the final level of the stroke-component-character Chinese character composition.
According to their structures, Chinese characters can be divided into undecomposable characters (simplified Chinese: 独体字; traditional Chinese: 獨體字) and decomposable characters (simplified Chinese: 合体字; traditional Chinese: 合體字). An undecomposable character is formed by one primitive component and is also called a single-component character, a decomposable character can be decomposed into two or more components and is also called a multi-component character.

## Undecomposable characters
### Definition

An undecomposable character is directly formed by strokes, cannot be decomposed into smaller components, though may be a component of a decomposable character. For example, 人 is an undecomposable characters formed by strokes ㇓ and ㇏, and is used to form character 丛.

### Lists of undecomposable characters

The following are some lists of undecomposable characters created by different authors.
Chinese Character Information Dictionary (漢字信息字典) contains a total of 7,785 standardized characters in the China Mainland. According to static statistics, there are 323 undecomposable characters, accounting for 4.149%. According to dynamic statistics, undecomposable characters account for 25.910% of the corpus. Because many single-component characters are frequently used characters. The list of undecomposable characters is as follows (in Pinyin order):
Su segmented 7,000 commonly used characters and obtained 233 undecomposable characters, accounting for 3.4%. The list of undecomposable characters is as follows (in stroke-based order):
In the Specification of the Undecomposable Characters Commonly Used in the Modern Chinese (现代常用独体字规范), 256 modern commonly used undecomposable characters have been identified within the scope of modern Chinese characters, forming the "List of Modern Commonly Used Undecomposable Characters". The list of undecomposable characters is as follows (in stroke-based order):
The List of Commonly Used Character Components in the Specification of Common Modern Chinese Character Components and Component Names (现代常用字部件及部件名称规范) includes a total of 311 commonly used character components, i.e., undecomposable characters. The list of undecomposable characters is as follows (in Pinyin order):
Based on the above experimental results, it is estimated that the number of undecomposable characters in modern Chinese characters approximately account for 4%.
Since each experimenting family has slightly different understandings of components and often uses different character sets, there are differences in the number of undecomposable characters obtained. But generally speaking, the results are quite similar, ranging between over 200 to over 300.

## Decomposable characters
### Definition

A decomposable character can be decomposed into more than one component. For example, "字" (character) is formed by two components (宀 + 子).
There are two frequently used modes of component combination in the study of Chinese character structures: first-level component combination and primitive component combination.

### First-level component combination

The first-level component combination mode or pattern is what people often call the structures of Chinese characters. According to this analysis, the structures of decomposable characters can be divided into 4 major categories and 13 subcategories:

#### Left to right structure

* Left to right (⿰), for example: 部, 件, 結 and 構.
* Left to middle and right (⿲): 衡, 班 and 辯.

#### Above to below structure

* Above to below (⿱): 要, 思 and 想.
* Above to middle and below (⿳): 鼻, 曼 and 率.

#### Surrounding structure

Full surround:
* Surrounded from four sides (⿴): 圍, 國 and 囪
Surrounded from three sides:
* Surround from above (⿵): 問, 同 and 風
* Surround from below (⿶): 凶, 画 and 函
* Surround from left (⿷): 匡, 匠 and 匣
Surrounded from two sides:
* Surround from upper left (⿸): 廣, 居 and 病.
* Surround from upper right (⿹): 句, 可 and 氧.
* Surround from lower left (⿺): 這, 建 and 題.
* Surround from lower right (⿽): 斗 and 头.

#### Overlaid structure

* Overlaid (⿻): 巫, 爽 and 承.

#### Chinese Character Distribution by Structures

The following data is excerpted from Chinese Character Information Dictionary, with 7,785 Chinese standard characters.
Chinese Character Distribution by structures :
| Structure | Characters | Character % | Character occurrences | Occurrence % |
| Undecomposable | 323 | 4.149 | 5,611,317 | 25.910 |
| Upper to lower | 1643 | 21.105 | 4,189,687 | 19.346 |
| Left to right | 5055 | 64.933 | 8,682,108 | 40.091 |
| Surround | 715 | 19.184 | 2,882,097 | 13.308 |
| Overlaid | 49 | 0.629 | 291,369 | 1.345 |

#### List of characters in nested structure

According to statistics from the Chinese Character Information Dictionary, there are a total of 49 characters of overlaid (or nested, including fully surrounded) structure among the 7,785 Chinese standard characters in the dictionary:
If the full surrounded characters are moved to the surrounding category, the overlaid characters will be even less.

### Primitive component combination

According to the planar analysis by primitive components, Chinese character structures include the following modes or patterns:
* For characters composed of two primitive components, there are 9 different structures, as shown by the following example characters: 吕认压达勾问区凶团.
* For characters composed of three components, there are 21 different structures, such as: 荣花型培树缠抛挺润抠捆部庶厢逞逊闾圄幽乖巫.
* For characters composed of four components, there are 20 different structures, such as: 营蕊蓝寤嫠筐辔椁摄燃游榧额韶欧剩腐遮阔匿.
* For characters composed of five components, there are 20 different structures, such as: 赢蒿膏寝蘧嚣篮樊搞澡缀渤漉髂齁敲酃戳魔噩.
* For characters composed of six components, there are 10 different structures, such as: 臀翳麓瀛灌骥歌豁豌衢.
* For characters composed of seven components, there are 3 different structures, such as: 戆麟饕.
* For characters composed of eight components, there is 1 structure, such as: 齉.
* For characters composed of nine components, there is 1 structure, such as: 懿.
The level to which Chinese character components should be divided must be determined based on specific needs. For example, Chinese character teaching often uses a coarser level of analysis in order to be concise, while component-encoding Chinese character input methods often use relatively detailed analysis in order to reduce coding elements.

### Chinese character distribution by numbers of components

The following data is excerpted from Chinese Character Information Dictionary. The components here refer to primitive components.
Chinese Character Distribution by Numbers of Components :
| Components | Characters | Character % | Character occurrences | Occurrence % |
| 1 | 323 | 4.149 | 5,611,317 | 25.910 |
| 2 | 2650 | 34.040 | 10,191,803 | 47.061 |
| 3 | 3139 | 40.321 | 4,652,330 | 21.482 |
| 4 | 1276 | 16.391 | 1,046,913 | 4.834 |
| 5 | 323 | 4.149 | 142,005 | 0.656 |
| 6 | 70 | 0.899 | 11,192 | 0.052 |
| 7 | 3 | 0.038 | 1,017 | 0.005 |
| 8 | 1 | 0.013 | 1 | 0.002 |
The static distribution is mainly concentrated in the number of components 2, 3, and 4; the dynamic distribution is mainly concentrated in the number of components 1, 2, and 3. In both dynamic and static distribution statistics, more than 99% of the characters have less than 5 primitive components. Note that the static component counts for component numbers 1 and 5 are the same, but their dynamic component counts are very different.