I am NOT Chinese.

I heard that it literally means "you good." So it's two words and two letters as well. While in Chinese (please correct me, Chinese people, if I'm wrong) the sign (idk Chinese term, Japanese term is "kanji") on the right means "good" it means "to like" in Japanese. Also the left side of this sign on the right by itself means "woman" while the rest of the sign means "child" (at least this is true for Japanese.)

EDIT: and no, the individual squiggles are by no means separate letters. "Woman child" doesn't sound like "good" or anything. It's all characters just by themselves and not synthetically connected.

The stroke order really matters. Usually you sort of do it from left to right and horizontal lines usually first. Not always. To write this, start with the slanted line on the very left of the left sign. Then do the vertical line below it. Then do the slanted line a little to the right of this. Then do the horizontal line. Then do the vertical line right below it. Then to the dash to the left of that. Then do the dash to the right. Make sure they're slanted the correct way. Yeah, that would be my best guess for the one on the left.

For the one on the right, it's hard to explain without drawing it. But at least I know how to write it for sure because I had to write it tons of times in Japanese class. Good luck.

You either start from left to right, top to bottom, or outside to inside.

http://www.zhongwen.com/shufa/index.html

I would define them each as a character.

A couple characters or one or three could have a meaning together. 你 means you, and 好 means good or well.

你 好 means you are well? or Be well, or Hello! You are well!

So you have EITHER two words, two characters, or one word!

Confusing, eh?

If you were to write this in China, you'd start at the top right of the page, and go down in columns. When you finished the column, move a column to the left and start another column. So on.

If you were to write this in America, you'd start at the top left of the page and go across in rows. Then when you complete a row, you move down a row and start another row. So on.

Id est America has Americanized the way to write Chinese here.

Or if you were asking how to write the characters, then stroke order matters. Chinese people use Maobi, or special paintbrushes with black ink that you hold funny, but regular pencils work fine. In fact they're better than bothering with maobi. (means brush pen.)

Here is the stroke order of 你:
http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/searchorder/29115/%E4%BD%A0%E5%A5%BD/
And of 好:
http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/searchorder/15264/%E4%BD%A0%E5%A5%BD/

But those are relatively easy "squiggles." Haha you'll coil back at this one:

靈

So I suggest two different dictionaries if you, levans are trying to learn Chinese.

http://zhongwen.com <-Hard to use, better written
http://nciku.com <-Easier to use, well written

I think, levans, you should stick to C and Java and that sort of stuff...