Every reference has it the same way, this isn't a Skritter thing. 车 has the vertical last. 较 has the horizontal (of the 车 component) last. Always seems odd to me. Can anyone explain why?

Thanks!

Jonas Björkstén's "Learn to Write Chinese Characters" (1994), p. 52, says:

Characters Fit In Imaginary Squares

Chinese characters are basically square. The sample characters in the earlier parts of the book have all been written in red squares, and this is how they are traditionally presented in order to make them easy to analyze and copy. Some characters are tall and skinny, others are broad and squashed, but as far as possible characters are made to conform to a square pattern. To achieve this, the various parts of the character are written in different ways, depending on where they appear in the whole.

Look, for example, at the character chē​, wagon, cart:

[hand written 車 and 车]

When chē​ stands on its own as a character, it is given ample space horizontally to fill its square, but when it plays the role of the radical in the character liàng​, vehicle, it is elongated to make room for the righthand part of the character:

[hand written 輛 and 辆]

The bottom héng [横, 一] stroke has been shortened and is written as a tiǎo [挑, ㇀] stroke to avoid poking the right part in the ribs.


PS. There is a recent series of 5 blog posts about handwriting starting on http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/blog/25/entry-567-handwriting-the-minimum-requirements-part-1/ You should check it out!

I should also add that the reason that ㇀ is written last is because it increases the speed of writing.

From part 4 of the series mentioned above ( http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/blog/25/entry-570-handwriting-the-minimum-requirements-part-4/ ):

One thing is the ㇀ (提) stroke, or rather misuse thereof. This stroke usually comes into being as a modification of some other stroke, usually to ease transition into starting the next stroke. Think of all the ㇀ in the characters you know. Likely there is something following it to the upper right. This is also why ㇀ is never the last stroke of a character. If you find yourself writing ㇀ as the last stroke of a character, then there are two possibilities:
1. It should actually be some other stroke, this stroke being what became ㇀.
2. You have written in the wrong stroke order.

And characters often try to fit more in a circle inscribed in the square.