As ruò, 若 is the literary/formal equivalent of 如果. Common in written Chinese, news, and set phrases. The 若...则... pattern is a formal 'if...then...' structure.
usage
Productive in idioms meaning 'as if / like': 若无其事 (as if nothing happened), 若即若离 (neither close nor distant), 若隐若现 (now visible, now hidden), 大智若愚 (great wisdom looks like foolishness).
mistakes
若 has a rare second reading rě, used only in Buddhist transliterations from Sanskrit: 般若 (prajñā, transcendent wisdom) and 兰若 (forest hermitage / Buddhist temple). Outside these religious terms, always read ruò.
Grass-top radical, the left-side form of 草. Originally 若 depicted a person combing or arranging loose hair, with the grass-on-top representing the strands; the sense drifted from 'to arrange / make orderly' to 'to be like / as if', and finally the modern conjunction 'if'. Filed under Kangxi #140 grass.
Bottom 右 — historically 又 (hand) over 口 (mouth). Originally a faint phonetic indicator (the ruò/yòu syllable family has drifted apart); pedagogically the hand-and-mouth shape still echoes the old hair-combing imagery.
