Is there a way to tell when boxes should be hooked?

It’s pretty hard to remember when a box should be hooked (in the bottom right corner) or not when they are similar to other characters.

For example according to Skritter:
in 魂 the box is hooked. In 塊 it’s not.
賊 hooked. 賦 not hooked.
貼 hooked. 則 not hooked.
膚 hooked. 蘆 not hooked.
意 hooked. 竟 not hooked.
標 hooked. 腰 not hooked.

I don’t know if there’s a pattern or if it even matters?

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http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4abeb69d0102e0oo.html has some commentary on this (in Chinese). To summarise, it says that this is really only important in handwriting, and even then only to make characters look better rather than being important for recognition.

The general principle stated there is that empty boxes like 口, boxes with vertical strokes like 巴 or 中 there is no hook; while for boxes that have strokes within them like 国 or 日 they should hook, unless used as radicals as in 的. For more details and the source see the link.

Based on this I think all of your examples should probably not have hooks, but happy to be corrected. This is not something I looked into before, and I don’t really follow the logic behind the rules given in the link.

Personally I don’t think this is something that’s worth worrying about too much unless you are interested in calligraphy.

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