Just found out from the school I'm studying at that you can now take HSK tests without writing by hand, instead you type them on a computer.

This is a fairly big game changer for me, as it means I could (in the next 3 months) take a shot at HSK 5 or 6, without being held back by my writing.

The obvious problem is that by not focusing on writing, my writing will be worse, and eventually be unusable.

As a big fan of Skritter, and hanzi themselves, I like learning new characters by writing them first, and I think it would be difficult to make much progress without doing so.

But the amount of time it takes to be able to write sentences on demand is a different thing, and a problem for me. I can recognise characters I've written in Skritter, and write with some prompts, but that's not really writing. Dictate a passage to me and even if I knew all the words, what I wrote would be full of mistakes. I'm aware that the solution is to write more and practice writing by hand. But my time and resources are limited.

So does this matter? As people who are all studying how to write, in daily life how often do you need to do so? I've asked a few Chinese, and they answer with a few things.

1: Filling out forms. Important, but I can comfortably memorise my address and name.
2: Tests. But this has changed.
3: Writing notes to themselves. Nice to be able to do, but not the end of the world, and I increasingly take notes on my phone anyway.
4: Poetry or Calligraphy. Two things I really like, but checking a dictionary for this seems ok.
5: That's it.

So please tell me - how often do you need to write Chinese in everyday life? If someone could speak, listen, read newspapers, and write essays on a computer, but couldn't handwrite essays, have they not learnt Chinese?

I live in Japan and I'm studying Japanese, but I never practice writing. I never use it for daily life. I communicate by speaking and if I need something written -- like at a store, post office, etc. -- I simply say "書けない" and the clerk understands and writes it for me. It's childish, I know, but in these situations there are only sub-optimal solutions. Practicing writing each and every day is too time consuming for me as well.

What's your definition of "learnt"?

Hi Talafar, nice news. What is the source of your new information?
I also dont like writing a lot but I realized that its a perfect way for me to develop my reading skills.
And as for practical use in every day life I agree. Even most Chinese slowly forget the more complex characters since they use electronic devices for input/output.

To be honest, I don't really use handwritten English that much anymore, let alone Chinese. I still prefer writing my design plans for work on paper, but that's about it.

I'd say with Chinese I most commonly end up writing down what I want to order at a restaurant on their little order paper. I can usually do it without looking, but even then the menu is there if I need a quick glance.

I wrote a note to our secretary on a post-it last month, after she had left for the day. Nothing that couldn't have been done electronically, but, yeah, I jumped at the opportunity to write by hand.

One place that handwriting is a must, though, is in the classroom. "Duh," you say, but no, I don't mean as a student. I mean, if you ever see yourself standing as a teacher by the blackboard, you will want to be able to write without copying from the book.

I think handwriting any language is becoming more of a hobby and less essential. I plan to use Skritter to help me recognize characters by 'over-studying' them a bit for reading and speaking, but I have no intention of ever being able to handwrite fluently.

@learninglife Many HSK test centers are switching to computer only or both. You can see which by searching for a place to take the HSK on chinesetest.cn (computer tests are indicated with a 网考 next to them) . I took a computer test recently and there were lots of HSK 4-6 takers in the same room who were given the option of using paper for the writing part if they preferred- no hands went up.

Actually, I'd been starting to wonder - how to learn cursive? Any good resources?

BTW, for icecream in Japan, there is always kana--if you need to spell something out, all Japanese will be able to read it.

Alan, I don't know how Chinese handwriting is perceived, but I know that native English speakers do not necessarily perceive handwriting that "tries to look like printed text" as "laughably 'cute' and childlike." On the contrary, don't we often prefer it for its clarity? Why else would forms so often instruct us to "please print legibly"? And why would drafting courses for architects and engineers train students to write "non-joined-up letters"?

Personally, even though I learned to write English cursive (the loopy kind) in school, the only thing I use it for is my signature.

@Alan. then how is the writing part done on the computer? whats the input method? pinyin?

@Snowcreature99: When it comes to studying the aesthetics of writing, all of a sudden, the Chinese method starts to make sense. There is really no other way than to stand on the shoulders of giants. Which is to say that you will need to simply copy how other people do it, for which I am sure there are a lot of resources. For example:
Compilation of Cursive Characters (《草字彙》), authored by Shi Liang (石梁)

(via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_script_(East_Asia) )

@learninglife yes there's some sort of pinyin IME- I didn't do the writing component though so I haven't used it.

@snowcreature99 I haven't found many resources that cover Chinese Cursive Handwriting in English, one great little book from the '50s that does is Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese (Far Eastern Publications Series) by Fred Fang-yu Wang. The Yale page seems to be down so I have linked to the example pages PDFs which I found quite informative:
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780887100338
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/languages/pdf/Wang_cursive_contents.pdf
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/languages/pdf/Wang_cursive_preface.pdf
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/languages/pdf/Wang_cursive_intro.pdf
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/languages/pdf/Wang_cursive_lesson1.pdf
(I noticed that although the book is pre-simplified characters, when quite a few characters are handwritten they look like their simplified forms, interesting...)

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Icecream: what "learnt" really means is kind of my question. Have I learnt Chinese if I can do everything but hand-write? Some would say no, but maybe in a modern world the answer is yes.

Learning JH: Source is just a teacher at the school I'm studying in, but I've asked a number of people now, and it seems to be a thing. And yes, I always see people checking there phones for how to write odd characters (normally when I ask them to write something for me).

Josh: Yeah me neither. Funny you should mention the restaurant thing, that happened to me the first time yesterday. I glanced at the menu :P

Laspimon: Yes, for teaching Chinese it would be essential. No way around that.

Alan:　Agreed, I hand write so little in English now. I think hobby is a good way of defining it.

Everyone talking about cursive:
I'd love a course which taught you how to read it. People can write the simplest things in cursive and its so so hard to read.

To distinguish homonyms during a conversation and clarify one's meaning, I've seen Chinese write an imaginary character on the palm of their hand... then the conversation continues

I think that is a good story to tell beginners, and yes, it does happen. However, it is not an overly practical method, and clarification is done much easier by purely verbal means. It just requires you to know the names of the components or know another word in which said character is used.
Actually, I suspect that natives usually write on their hand for their own sake, with the purpose of remembering the components themselves. Then, as they write, they speak the components out loud. What you see as an observer, however, is that two people are focussing their attention on the drawing being done on the hand, while one of them mumbles something incomprehensible to your foreign ear:
丬：柴爿 (cháipán) 的爿。夕阳（xīyáng）的夕。尺寸（chǐcùn）的寸。
Of course we are going to just suppose that the listener recognized that the speaker drew 将 on her hand. But how realistic is it in practice, considering how complex characters need to be before the method even needed?
In any case, I don't think it's worth sweating about.

http://www.cool3c.com/article/67457 how to practise handwriting reps faster.

"BTW, for icecream in Japan, there is always kana--if you need to spell something out, all Japanese will be able to read it."

Reading all-kana text is an incredible pain in the butt. I frankly do not understand how someone could study Japanese while not being able to write it. However, isn't learning to write what Skritter is for?

To this end, I have made a 5,000 word list that covers all of the Kyouiku Kanji here:
http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=189036595

Anyone who completes it will be able to read and write the most common 1,000 kanji, which cover the great majority of kanji used.

Talafar, personally I've had no trouble not learning how to write most characters. If someone doesn't bother with writing (beyond the first 500 characters or so) then I imagine they'll be able to reach the level where they can read novels/newspapers much faster than if they'd also learnt how to write.

@ fluvius1

My memory for any kind of written material besides English is awful; my phonological memory, though, is much high. Even writing in kana is inefficient when compared to just memorizing what I need to say.

@ Tanizaki

I study Japanese every day but I am unable to write it. Writing is a completely different skill from listening or speaking.

I am doing my business degree in Chinese. If you ever want to take courses in Chinese you will need to learn to handwrite, because listening in Chinese and writing English notes does not work well. Also, any tests or examinations will still be done with pen and paper!

Talafar - where did you hear that the new HSK will not require handwriting?

@贺知宝 - Many testing centres in China are already offering the HSK on computer, which does not require handwriting. Outside of China it's being phased in more slowly. A few European capitals were supposed to start offering it this year; I'm not sure if that's happened yet or not.