Hi all!

This post may seem a bit personal, but my gf has been watching my write, and hammer away at Chinese. She shared some really useful advice with me, which of course I will pass onto all of you (so long as you promise to reserve a spot for me in your hearts)!

Here's the meat:

When writing Chinese, always ensure the RADICAL is the SMALLEST part of the character. Let me use 活 as an example. See the shui radical (left side of the character) looks smaller than the right hand side of the character? This same pattern applies to ALL characters with radicals.When writing try to write the radical smaller than the other parts of the character!

If you can remember this little trick it'll help your characters look more native like.

Hope this information helps, if it doesn't then I'm sorry for making you read my prose.

be well

So 虍 should be written smaller than 力 in 虏? (I don't agree) Or are you only talking about certain types of characters (e.g., with the radical on the left)?

Be well!

Interesting post. Funnily enough, I don't really mind how my characters look. I have appalling hand-writing in English, so I have no great designs on making my character's look native-like.

Thankfully, I find that Chinese people are just impressed that I can write out characters in a correct stroke-order! For that, I must once again pass my grateful thanks to the Skritter Overlords whom I will always be in their debt.

I don't think it's true even of characters with the radical on the left. 引 comes to mind. Or was she referring to the script style?

Sorry, I was not clear in my post!

In English we have rules with exceptions, and what you all have pointed out here are exceptions.

I was actually under the impression that it worked in all cases as well, but my lady was explaining this to me in Chinese, so I must've tripped up and misheard her!

Sorry all!

No need to be sorry! It's interesting that you share stuff like this with us.

Since we are already on this topic? Does anyone have a good resource to read/write Chinese hand-writing? Obviously, I know about stroke order, but still I usually can't decipher hand-written texts unless the person really tries to write "foreigner friendly". Also I'd like to know how to write characters faster (without ending up writing them wrong).

There is a book called Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese, by Fang-yü Wang, Yale University 1958, ISBN 978-0-88710-033-8

I have a copy, obviously a new reprint, but I haven't used it.

@朗帝, If you have an iPad, check out AllSet Learning's "Chinese Picture Book Reader" app. (Free, with in-app purchases available.) Then download its College Kids series.) (Some of these are available as free samples too.) It is not designed to teach you handwriting, but if you look at the graphics you will see handwritten notes that correspond to the spoken content, so it could at least give you a little practice. Also an outstanding app and content for reading and listening to Chinese, in my opinion.

I wholeheartedly agree with Zeppas recommendation, however it is for traditonal characters (many of the simplified characters comes from cursive simplifications though). I also recommend Johan Björkstén's book Learn to Write Chinese Characters (1994), which is for regular script and might not be necessary if you've used Skritter a lot, and the blog series by Hofmann at chinese-forums.com, for regular script: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/blog/25/entry-567-handwriting-the-minimum-requirements-part-1/ and for cursive http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/blog/25/entry-577-how-to-learn-cursive-行書/

If you are in China you can buy special paper with squares filled in and with see through paper, made especially to practice any cursive variant you want, e.g., 行楷、行书、草书.