Characters and writing them.

bendidelaowai
November 23, 2008, 11:18 AM posted in General Discussion

Some of you have more experience, some less. I just wonder. I am not too bad at characters, I remember them, read them and write them. When it comes to writing I have a problem, no matter what my characters don't look nice. the radicals are too spaced apart, or the ideal square shape becomes rectangular. I tried learning to write better by using the tracing copybooks (one page has characters printed, then there is the transparent paper on which you write by tracing) and also I am trying to use the grid paper as much as possible. Still, not much improvement. I write with a fountain pen (my writing in other languages is legible and pretty neat). Any tips? Maybe some better exercises?

Thanks in advance.

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kevin091
December 04, 2008, 11:45 PM

You can watch the stroke order animations from http://www.archchinese.com and use the generated worksheets to practice. I think the stroke sequences and proportions are very important to make your handwritings look nice.

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bendidelaowai
December 07, 2008, 07:16 AM

I didn't come across this website before:) Thanks, I am looking at it and already using!

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sfrrr
April 20, 2009, 07:46 PM

No one has mentioned Learn to Write Chinese Characters (Yale Language Series) by Johan Bjorksten? (The link is to Amazon.) He uses a ballpoint pen and emphasizes stroke order and proportions. Extremely useful for people (like me) with execrable handwriting.

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bendidelaowai
May 07, 2009, 01:32 AM

Thanks for the link!!!

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ousijia
December 10, 2009, 06:13 AM

Foreigners are not the only people who struggle to learn and write Chinese characters!

http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/none/have-shanghainese-people-forgotten-how-write-chinese-414676