The theory of Chinese character writing demonstrates the motivation of form change, features of visual recognition and rules of form evolution in terms of writing. Writing motivation refers to the external form of Chinese characters. This external form of Chinese characters represents and interprets the forming motivation of those highlycodified and obscurelymotivated slang words, false words and icons, associates the interword relation between these words and corresponding standard words, bringing them back to prescriptive wordmeaning correspondence and relationship between words. In the course of invention and development, Chinese characters provided not only the meaning of formal structure, wordmaking intention and internal making motivation indicating the relation between form and meaning. Besides, they also presented such writing motivations as formal composition, evolution and visual recognition in terms of writing. Thus making motivation and writing motivation make up the two wings of motivations of Chinese characters, demonstrating the complicated, hierarchical and continuous motivations of Chinese characters.

motivation of Chinese characters; making motivation; writing motivation; history of development of Chinese characters