Which way do you write your homework?

[TheEnglishKnitter]

Do you go top to bottom or left to right?
I'm loving my evening class and enjoying the homework. The teacher doesn't have a specific preference so long as we complete the sentences. I'm trying to use as much kanji intermixed with my kana as possible. I just wondered what everyone else did.
In my Japanese Grazia magazine there seems to be no preference either.
It feels odd to me going top to bottom, but kinda fun too.
What does everyone else do?

This is obviously not the key question of the day, its a dreamy, vague 'I wonder' type discussion. As you can see I have selected the priority reading of the minute in the Grazia translation!

[furrykef]

I've never had a Japanese class, so I've never had to deal with this question exactly. But when practicing hiragana and katakana I usually wrote vertically.

If I were taking a class, it'd depend on what kind of paper I used. If I used standard notebook paper, I'd write horizontally; if I used completely blank paper, I'm not entirely sure.

[phreadom]

Any particular reason you practiced vertically? I've been doing all my Heisig drills horizontally in a notebook. It didn't occur to me to practice vertically (and wouldn't have short of some paper specifically made for it, or some direction telling me to.)

[SomeCallMeChris]

When I took a class, most of my homework I did horizontally but essays I did in vertical writing. I do prefer vertical reading and writing, mostly for the aesthetics, I suppose. Since books are printed in vertical writing, there might be some practical advantage to being familiar with the look of it before trying to read your first novel or history.

I have a pdf for 'special paper' 原稿用紙（げんこうようし）from
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/genkoyoushi/
(and don't try to remember the name of the paper by the misspelled romaji in the URL or you'll be off by a vowel.)

If you do a web search you can find a few other free PDFs but that's the most plain and basic one I found. I haven't ever been bothered enough by the attribution at the bottom of the page to make my own file, but it wouldn't be hard.

Anyway, I use vertical writing for Heisig reviews, and now and then for other bits and pieces of study. Still, if I print something out from the computer it's pretty much always in horizontal writing, and whenever I'm writing alternately in English and in Japanese (like notes about meanings of words or phrases), horizontal writing is more natural, which adds up to most of my study being horizontal writing. I don't really have a lot of reason to write in pure Japanese other than simply practicing the writing of characters.

[TheEnglishKnitter]

Thats brilliant. I hadn't even thought there might be special paper.
I haven't used paper with horizontal lines for years, I just have notebooks with blank pages. I like the freedom of being able to write or draw or link with arrows or mind map where needed.

[phreadom]

Ah, thanks for the link! Now I just need a new printer.