Reading & Writing Chinese: Traditional Character Edition, A Comprehensive Guide to the Chinese Writing System Paperback – September 15, 1999

McNaughton's 'Reading and Writing Chinese' remains a very useful guide for learners attempting to acquire literacy in Chinese. It comprises two sections, the first listing some 1,062 elementary* characters with its stroke order, Mandarin pronunciation and meaning, as well as a few compound words using the character and the simplified version of the character if it exists. The second section comprises the remainder of the characters in the official list of 2,000 basic characters promulgated by the Chinese government, and gives much the same information as the first section, save the stroke order (which the learner should already be conversant with after learning the first section) and the compound words. The book contains a number of useful indices that may be used to look up unfamiliar characters by pronunciation, stroke-count, etc.
*McNaughton has adopted a largely pedagogical order in the presentation of characters. Unlike many books which present the most commonly-used characters first (although this is not to say that the characters he presents are not, in the main, common ones), characters that are geometrically simplest are first presented, and complex characters are built-up from the simpler parts already presented. This does, in many ways, aid the memorisation of complex characters, if their parts are already known, but it also has the effect of presenting some rare, obscure, archaic or otherwise obsolete characters early on, so that they may be used as a section of a more complex, but common, character later on. Similarly, the compound words are chosen so that they only use characters that have already been learnt.
One feature that I liked about this book is that it gives hints on learning the characters, and etymological information on the derivation of the character if it is useful for helping memorise the characters. As mentioned before, there is great emphasis placed on the building up of a character from its parts.
This edition is a revised version of the 1979 edition containing a number of changes. The most significant change is probably the switch from Yale romanisation to Pinyin. The former was designed for pedagogical purposes, and is perhaps more convenient for English speakers, but the latter is increasingly becoming standard and the switch was probably not unwise. The second notable change is the use of the kaishu (model script) in the head characters in place of the (often idiosyncratically) handwritten characters of the original edition. I thought there was some charm in the handwritten edition, but I suppose, for the sake of standardisation, the new format is better, for the kaishu script is something of a normative standard in Chinese. (The disadvantage is that it looks like it has been written with a brush rather than the pen, whereas most learners would probably use a pen. The differences between brush- and pen-written characters, however, are slight.) The compound words have also been increased in number, and chosen to better reflect the vocabulary of contemporary Chinese, an added bonus, although they really only illustrate the uses of the character, and does not constitute a resource for acquiring Chinese vocabulary.
All in all then, it is a very useful book for a learner beginning on the road to literacy in Chinese. I have not given five stars, not because I discovered any major flaws, but because I did not get the impression of outstanding excellence that merits it. I really have no complaint of note to make about the book. (Inclusion of Cantonese pronunciation in addition to the Mandarin, however, would be a welcome bonus.)

If you are serious about learning the Chinese writing system, this is one of the best books. It's a tough job and no resource should be overlooked, but this is one which can provide tremendous support.
Over ten years ago when I began my studies, this book served as my guide in the absence of formal instruction. There are two unique elements to the book. The first is the etymologies, which serve to make the language-learning process more interesting and fun, as well as an extremely useful mnemonic. For those who wish to explore Chinese literature, both ancient and modern, it is invaluable that this book does not pass over radicals and certain basic characters which are not in common use but which are fundamental elements of the language.
The second wonderful aspect of this book is its explanation, on a stroke by stroke basis, of how to write each character in its complex and original form. Learning to write Chinese is a skill acquired through repetition, and this book provides the background for the necessary rote-work. But if you follow the stroke sequence clearly illustrated in this book, the way to write any Chinese character will eventually come naturally.
This book was my constant companion during the initial period that I was learning Chinese, and now I have a gift the value of which is truly beyond measure.

I started learning to write Chinese by working my way through this book, memorizing the characters, pronunciation, and definitions. Now I sort of regret it. The list of characters is reasonable enough. If your goal is to memorize a bunch of characters, these are good ones to concentrate on, and they're generally presented in a reasonable order. The stroke order diagrams are helpful when you're first starting out, and it isn't a problem that they're only present for the first half of the list of characters; by the time you finish the part of the book with the diagrams, you will have long since developed a good intuitive sense of the stroke order rules.

Unfortunately, beyond the selection of characters and the diagrams, it kind of falls short.

My biggest complaint is that the definitions are often not good. When a character has multiple meanings (as most of them do) you can't count on the most common meaning being first in the list, and in some cases common meanings aren't listed at all. If you're using the definitions to make flashcards, you'll be frustrated by the number of times two characters are given exactly the same English definition, even though in reality they differ in connotation or in usage.

There is never any distinction made between characters that stand as words on their own and characters that only ever appear as parts of compound words, which will definitely trip you up a lot if you're using this as a source of vocabulary. And the compound words are sometimes obscure or very old-fashioned terms that, if you say them to a Chinese speaker, will cause them to give you a puzzled look and ask where the heck you learned THAT old word.

The font used for the characters is a typewritten one. If you learn to write the characters as printed in this book, you will end up writing in a very precise but somewhat mechanical-looking style rather than a more artistic handwritten style. Whether that's a plus or a minus is up to your sense of aesthetics. The traditional character edition of this book uses a handwritten font; even though I'm primarily learning simplified characters, if I had it to do over again I'd have picked up that edition instead. (Both editions actually contain both character forms; the difference is mostly the font and the order of the entries.)

If you get this book, use it as a list of characters to learn and a large collection of stroke order diagrams. Keep a real dictionary handy and it'll be a worthwhile learning resource.