How precise do people write kanji?

[Tangram]

In every day use? Does anyone have any examples? I think my kanji are fairly decent, but that's coming from my point of view. XD I've never seen written kanji, only typed, so I have no idea exactly how precise they typically are when written.

[Lucas89]

I have sent you a PM

[Tangram]

Originally Posted by Lucas89

I have sent you a PM

Thanks very much. It was perfect. ^.^

[Harold]

It depends. Teacher writing during a lecture? Not really legible. A lot of the artistic kanji (calligraphy) is hard to read too. For example:



is

武
道

The shape looks the same, but I would have never guessed what they were without knowing what they were beforehand.

Usually most people's handwriting is legible enough to read, but those with bad handwriting can really give learners like us a really hard time...

Here are plenty of examples of handwriting
手書き - Google Image Search

[Hatredcopter]

Every kanji has a certain stroke order. If you write kanji using the right stroke order, they'll turn out fine. Once you practice learning kanji and see the patterns in stroke order, you'll be able to write all of them without much trouble. It just takes time and a bit of practice. If you aren't taking any proper Japanese classes, try searching the internet for animated pictures or videos of kanji being written.

[Tangram]

Originally Posted by Harold

It depends. Teacher writing during a lecture? Not really legible. A lot of the artistic kanji (calligraphy) is hard to read too. For example:



is

武
道

The shape looks the same, but I would have never guessed what they were without knowing what they were beforehand.

Usually most people's handwriting is legible enough to read, but those with bad handwriting can really give learners like us a really hard time...

Here are plenty of examples of handwriting
手書き - Google Image Search

So, it's similar to Roman letters, then? That's extremely comforting. Mine are turning out almost as legible as most of those examples. Thanks very much!

Originally Posted by Hatredcopter

Every kanji has a certain stroke order. If you write kanji using the right stroke order, they'll turn out fine. Once you practice learning kanji and see the patterns in stroke order, you'll be able to write all of them without much trouble. It just takes time and a bit of practice. If you aren't taking any proper Japanese classes, try searching the internet for animated pictures or videos of kanji being written.

I know the stroke orders for all of the kanji I know (I know about 70). But my English penmanship is bad enough, and my kanji weren't turning out like computer generated fonts. From the examples that were posted by Harold, I think I'm on the right track.

[MMM]

Your kanji should NOT look like the samples hand-written samples Harold posted. It should look more like the printed versions.

[Nyororin]

Real people do not write in calligraphy for anything other than the purpose of writing in calligraphy. It`s not common use.

Take a pic or scan your handwriting. I`ll tell you whether it`s legible or not. My husband`s handwriting sucks, but it`s more balance and shape than anything nearing a mistake. Every stroke counts - if you screw them up then it`s going to be illegible.

Stylized calligraphy is NOT what you should be looking at to judge - but neither are any fonts as printed Japanese is different than handwritten.

Actually, I`m having déjà vu now... I believe I posted something very similar to this relatively recently. Do a search for fonts and hopefully you can find it.

[Tangram]

Originally Posted by MMM

Your kanji should NOT look like the samples hand-written samples Harold posted. It should look more like the printed versions.

Are you referring to the Google results samples? I had someone PM me samples of a letter from a Japanese penpal, and they looked pretty similar to those.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

Real people do not write in calligraphy for anything other than the purpose of writing in calligraphy. It`s not common use.

Take a pic or scan your handwriting. I`ll tell you whether it`s legible or not. My husband`s handwriting sucks, but it`s more balance and shape than anything nearing a mistake. Every stroke counts - if you screw them up then it`s going to be illegible.

Stylized calligraphy is NOT what you should be looking at to judge - but neither are any fonts as printed Japanese is different than handwritten.

Actually, I`m having déjà vu now... I believe I posted something very similar to this relatively recently. Do a search for fonts and hopefully you can find it.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...njisamples.jpg

I did these on my tablet pretty quickly, just jotted down. I'm pretty sure that 金 is pretty illegible. Particularly in the second set. XD

I figured that few people write them exactly as the calligraphy or computer fonts look. But I don't want to get used to writing them the way that I do if they're totally off, you know?

I'll do a search for that thread. ^.^

[Nyororin]

They`re legible - but look exactly like what they are, written by someone who isn`t that good at Japanese yet.
Try to get a good writing practice tablet so that you can smooth things out and make everything a fairly uniform size. A good tactic is to not try and let any of your own personal handwriting style in until you`ve really mastered a bunch.