I've recently seen the value of learning traditional characters, especially living in California. I have it on good authority (Taiwanese friend) that there is a difference between characters handwritten and characters in calligraphy. So here's a consistency question: Why are we learning the complicated version of "麼" which has a hook on the variant "木" inside, and yet "為" instead of "爲" (both of which mean the same thing as far as I can tell).

I'm pretty sure the official term for this is "traditional character variants". Wikipedia links to a Taiwanese database of some 100,000 or so character variants, though I'm guessing many are historical in nature.

Perhaps a basic question that needs answering is does skritter need another distinction in traditional characters? If not, then should we learn calligraphic forms or handwritten forms? 哎呀！

In either case, the authors of this website would have to choose an authoritative source or make arbitrary judgements where there are disagreements between China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I feel your pain, guys. You must have some knowledge of this problem already.

I have slavered and swore over my traditional character variant map, which now contains 122 simplified characters that map to multiple traditionals. (I try to exclude those traditional variants that no one will use.) Likewise, George has spent many hours checking references for el varianto obscuros. Just creating the system to handle variants flexibly took a very long time.

Scott is making a tool that's going to make it easier for me to add variant characters, at which point I'll get 爲 in there, too (although you'll have to explicitly choose it, and it'll still be 為 inside of other words).

For 麼, several people who know a lot more about traditional than I ever hope to kept insisting that it's supposed to be like that, with the curvy hemp bits instead of the straight wooden bits.

We usually take the Taiwanese standard over Hong Kong style (haven't seen a good reference from Hong Kong yet, but there's a great Taiwanese one). For simplified things, though, we always follow the mainland.

Anyway, we're not going to touch calligraphic forms with a two-thousand-year-old brush.

Thanks for the response. Clearly simplified is easier to manage because there forms have been mandated. I think my mind is just going to stay fairly flexible with regard to traditional characters. That others can recognize your characters as you intend is the most important thing, I think. I don't know about you, but I've seen some pretty hurried Chinese handwriting, and they definitely stretch the limits of recognition.

Yes, I have seen the horrifying specter that is Chinese handwriting.

When you're first learning Chinese, there's the moment you realize that there can be more than one character with the same pinyin and tone. Gulp. Then, later, you realize that the same character can have multiple tones and even pinyins, which becomes your new lamentation until you start having to differentiate characters like 天夭矢夫末未失先, 大太犬丈火, 己已巳, 千干于, 便使更吏史, etc.

Then, when you're feeling good about your Chinese, you'll run into handwritten and calligraphic styles. Maybe there are levels of despair beyond those, but I'm definitely not there yet.

It's like the pit of despair in the Princess Bride.