Writing Japanese Neatly

[jinksys]

I am currently reading a book called Japanese the Manga Way and I have to say that the difference between hand written kana/kanji and typeset kana/kanji is significant. JtMW teaches japanese using manga panels to illustrate each topic, and some manga artists use hand written japanese for dialog bubbles and some use typeset japanese, and it makes me feel alot better about the "sloppiness" of my characters when I see some people can get paid to use such sloppy hand writing

[Danyoru]

Wow, that is reassuring.
Writing hiragana is so hard for me! It always looks sloppy and unbalanced!

[InsanityRanch]

Once again I will recommend a wonderful program called Lexikan. (http://www.Lexikan.com). I don't own a piece of it!

It is great for practicing writing kana and kanji, because it "corrects" your strokes as soon as you finish each one. It also enforces stroke order.

Shira

[MenomaMinx]

want to hear something funny?

almost from moment I learned to write, I have been harassed by every single teacher I've ever had about my messy handwriting. they even used to pull me out of class for it so I could "practice". They finally backed off in college,but that mostly had to do with my hands being disabled by that point in my life {unrelated to the lifelong English handwriting issue}

anyway, I didn't take up Japanese handwriting until after I messed up my hands;and yet, this is the handwriting that gets me complements from complete strangers. one Asian looking woman at the Borders bookstore cafe recently even asked me what I used to live -- she thought I was from Japan! not bad for an Irish Polish girl from Jersey

seriously though, don't worry about it.at the end of the day all anyone's going to care about the content of your thoughts on the paper. Anyone who doesn't care about that, doesn't have any genuine interest in you to begin with; so why would their opinions matter

[Schattenjedi]

MenomaMinx wrote:
seriously though, don't worry about it.at the end of the day all anyone's going to care about the content of your thoughts on the paper. Anyone who doesn't care about that, doesn't have any genuine interest in you to begin with; so why would their opinions matter

You're ignoring the fact that if you can't read what someone is writing, or it takes 10 times as long to read it bcuz of how messy it is, then you can't really take interest in the content.

[Maikuru]

I dont have much difficulty writing hiragana but its not the greatest in art form i think
Computers are your friend it writes it neatly for you....

Plus youll need to get over thinking your hiragana is sloppy.... becuase kanji is harder and more stroking.... ^_^

ね？

[mandolin]

This was a big issue for me because I always thought I wrote my kana and kanji very badly, too. It never looked very good at all. But then I picked up this one textbook that has examples of what the handwritten Kanji looks like, in addition to the brush-written calligraphy. I was so relieved to see that it as mostly the same as mine looked. It still takes me a bit to get used to the idea that a pencil or pen will just never look as good as the beautiful brush strokes.

[Gakusha]

I saw a picture of a classroom in Japan with the day's classes written on a chalkboard. I expected the handwriting to be really neat, but it wasn't all that great, which surprised me because teachers usually have very good handwriting. I doubt every Japanese person takes the time to make their writing look like calligraphy.

My kana used to be sloppy, but if you practice it enough it will improve quickly. They key is following the correct stroke order.

[Mukade]

Keep in mind, though, that if you write kanji/kana as neatly as a typewriter/printer, then it's not really considered very aesthetically pleasing. Kanji that flow are far more attractive.

What you are thinking looks "sloppy" is, in all likelihood, a highly practiced flowing form of handwriting. If you ever study penmanship with a Japanese teacher, you'll realize very quickly that what appears very sloppy at first glance, in fact, takes A LOT of practice to master.

There is, in reality, a "right" and a "wrong" way to draw characters "sloppily."

For a visual look: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2095.html

[MenomaMinx]

Schattenjedi wrote:

MenomaMinx wrote:
seriously though, don't worry about it.at the end of the day all anyone's going to care about the content of your thoughts on the paper. Anyone who doesn't care about that, doesn't have any genuine interest in you to begin with; so why would their opinions matter

You're ignoring the fact that if you can't read what someone is writing, or it takes 10 times as long to read it bcuz of how messy it is, then you can't really take interest in the content.

I've heard what you're saying before, however, I don't really think it 's relevant in today's modern society.

Allow me to elaborate:

In today's world, nearly all business correspondences are expected to be typed. In fact, this trend is magnifying exponentially year by year. In fact, outside of personal correspondence , quick personal notes, and the occasional medical form, I don't really see any use for handwriting as such other than recreation.

Of course, I admit I'm biased; but at the same time, computerized text entry becomes more evolved into new and unexpected ways to utilize it all the time. I think that Japanese text entry is eventually going to move almost exclusively towards voice recognition as well as towards mouse/gesture recognition programs like Dasher. They're just so much simpler and more intuitive than actually writing by hand:-)

[Taseea_Bat]

People from Japan reading our handwriting in English would probably think it looked sloppy compaired to typed english.

We are so used to writing english that we do it very fast which will stop it from being as neat as it would be typed. Just like i cant read some adults writing beacuse they've written it so fast that it doesnt seem to resemble letters.

[mithrila]

What's really sad for me is that my Japanese handwriting is neater than my English, and it takes me about the same amount of time. I'm not sure why this is, but I think it's because I never had a penmanship class for English, and I actually spent some class time on Japanese penmanship.

My kanji looked *really* bad until I scanned some and sent them to my aunt's Japanese friend who lives in Kobe. "Omoshiroi kanji da ne." Was her only response. I cleaned them up really quickly. She probably says that to her grandkids too.

[ayesee]

Mukade wrote:
There is, in reality, a "right" and a "wrong" way to draw characters "sloppily."

For a visual look: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2095.html

Looking at the cursive style of writing there, it's safe to say to me it looks like a completely different language. :)

[Gakusha]

I found a semi-cursive (gyosho) font that looks like written Japanese, in case you want to learn how to write the kanji and kana so they look more authentic. The font can be downloaded here.

http://www.nihongo.d2g.com/recursos/fue ... japo_e.php