Radical 87
Radical 87 or radical claw meaning "claw", "nail" or "talon" is one of the 34 Kangxi radicals composed of 4 strokes.
In the Kangxi Dictionary there are 36 characters to be found under this radical.
爪 is also the 86th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China, with 爫 being its associated indexing component.
Variant forms
There is a design nuance between the form of 爪 in different typefaces. In mainland China standard, the starting point of the third and fourth strokes of 爪 are joined with the first stroke, while in Taiwan's Standard Form of National Characters, they are detached. This difference may apply to both printing typefaces and handwriting forms, and usually both are acceptable.| Joined | Detached |
| 爪 | 爪 |
| 爬 | 爬 |
The upper component form 爫 also has variant forms in different regions. Traditionally, the second and fourth strokes point outwards in printing typefaces but point inwards in handwriting. In mainland China's xinzixing, some 爫 were replaced by, e.g. 爭 -> 争, while the others were altered their form to imitate the handwriting form 爫, e.g. 爵 -> 爵; These changes also apply to traditional Chinese characters, e.g. 諍 -> 諍, 爲 -> 爲. Similar change were also adopted in Japanese jōyō kanji, e.g. 爵 -> 爵, while the forms of kyūjitai and hyōgai kanji were left unchanged, e.g. 爲, 爰. In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau where Traditional Chinese is used, 爫 is adopted as the standard form, though both forms are commonly used in publication.
| Pointing inwards | Pointing outwards |
| 爫 | 爫 |
| 爰 | 爰 |
| Traditional handwriting Mainland China new typeface Hong Kong & Taiwan standard Japan jōyō kanji | Traditional typefaces Mainland China old typeface Hong Kong & Taiwan old typeface Japan hyōgai kanji Korea |