Stroke order for 印

Question

I've seen two different stroke orders for this character:

and

Which one is more "correct" or widely used?

It seems to me that the fourth stroke in the latter picture is incorrect, and that it should be part of the second one. Is this right?

Answer 1

I believe for 印 the 1st one is correct. 氏 is written in this order: . The first 3 strokes are exactly same as those first 3 stroks in 印.

Consider the following characters: 卯, 留，齊(齐). We finish this part first, , then add the next strokes, which are 丿, 丶, and ㇏ respectively.

But if you make the font of 印 like this, the 2nd order in your question is correct.

The discussion above is for 楷书. But the stroke orders are sometimes different for 行书 or 草书, in order to write faster. See the following examples:

Take as an example, the stroke order is:

Answer 2

Unfortunately, there is no one universal correct stroke order. It differs:

• from country to country,
• between radical, standalone and handwriting forms,

It may be different in each of:

• Mainland China,
• Hong Kong,
• Taiwan,
• Japan,
• Korea,
• Vietnam.

"The modern governments of mainland China, Hong Kong,Taiwan, and Japan have standardized official stroke orders to be taught in schools. These stroke order standards are prescribed in conjunction to each government's standard character sets. The various official stroke orders agree on the vast majority of characters, but each have their differences. No governmental standard matches traditional stroke orders completely. The differences between the governmental standards and traditional stroke orders arise from accommodation for schoolchildren who may be overwhelmed if the rules about stroke orders are too detailed, or if there are too many exceptions." - says Wikipedia.

Even more to that differences, there may also be variants of the same character in different font sets.
E.g.:

Even in English there are differences in spelling, too, e.g.: theater vs. theatre.