This may seem like an odd feature request, but hear me out :-)

I've come to the realization that my 手写 is atrocious. Not my ability to write accurately; Skritter has been amazing for character recognition and memory. But my actual handwriting--its shape, its proportions, the way it flows--is terrible. My characters look like a four-year-old's, as my wife would say.

One of the great things about Skritter is that you can speed along as fast as you are comfortable, and trust that the scrib recognition will react accordingly. This is great for doing a large number of reviews in a short amount of time. What it's not great for is your actual handwriting. You learn how Skritter character recognition works, and you meet it halfway. You write so that Skritter knows what your intentions are, fast. And this is exactly what it's designed to do. Skritter is not a calligraphy course.

This morning I tried something different. I opened a notebook, and tried writing every character that came up by hand, as well as by mouse (my tablet is out of commision at the moment). This was good in some ways. It felt oddly satisfying to write Chinese with a pencil again. I haven't done much of this, and since I'm living in China now, I'd best get comfortable writing by hand. The second thing I found, predictably, was that it was monotonous. Why must I also draw with the mouse what I just drew by hand? For characters I knew, the solution was obvious. If I knew the character, and could write it out by hand, then I hit Spacebar on the keyboard to skip to the next review. Problem solved. For characters I forgot, of course, this was impossible. Skritter currently has no way of grading a character without also writing it.

And at last we come to my feature request. What if you could assign a grade to an item without actually fulfilling the input requirements of that item? I guess I'm speaking primarily about character writing, though this could also apply to tones, reading, and definition. It means that you could 1) grade yourself immediately upon seeing a question, or 2) skip directly to the answer and grade yourself. For me the reasoning is this: The only way to improve your handwriting is to do a lot of it. And doubling your work is a drag, when a simpler solution is possible. Using Anki for separate handwriting practice is another possibility, but then I'd miss out on the great spaced-repetition Skritter already provides. And besides, Skritter knows me.

I should ask this first--Is this something anyone else would be interested in?

I think this is already possible. You can skip and grade by doing 1-4.

Kind've a niche request, but it's a cool idea for people who want to use Skritter's spaced repetition without necessarily writing every time. It might be best as a fifth thing to study - writing, tones, definition, reading, and handwriting. I would probably use it if it were implemented, though it would be secondary to the on-screen writing.

I've had a similar idea actually, but it would be harder because it would require Skritter to add full-character handwriting recognition - a mode that allows you to write a whole character with ink before it checks your accuracy. This wouldn't entirely be a handwriting exercise, though, but it would help, as it's currently very easy to use early strokes to cue your memory of the rest of a character, instead of learning it as a whole.

This is just my thinking, but if you want to work on your handwriting, turn off the computer. Take a calligraphy class. (Or just practice on your own if you don't have access to a class.)

By trying to learn vocabulary and improve handwriting at the same time you actually become less efficient at both.

In Chinese calligraphy class, the teacher typically hands you a text to copy out. There will be some-- or even many-- words that you don't know, and this holds true even for native Chinese speakers (think of all those grade-school kids copying out passages from Confucius) but actually, you don't need to understand the words to learn to write them beautifully. This would be analogous to my copying out Latin quotes in a fine hand in spite of not knowing any Latin.

Similarly, Chinese students starting out in calligraphy typically spend hours making meaningless vertical lines, horizontal lines, circles, dots, and so on.... just another example of dissociating calligraphy from vocabulary.

To address your requested features more directly: they may be useful in other ways, but I don't think they will lead to handwriting improvement, even indirectly.

Isn't the handwriting the only part that skritter does that Anki doesnt? If you want to do the handwriting and check, then you can just use Anki (ie just make cards that say "Draw ni3 / you").

skritterjohan - Yeah, just noticed that. If you press 1-2-3-4 and Next, is your grading preserved? I thought the Next button automatically marked your character as right.

ulyart - Those are some good suggestions. I agree that intensive calligraphy practice is needed at some point. The problem for me is that I don't have buckets of free time to devote to writing Chinese. To the extent that I do have time (on Skritter, say) I want to write by hand.

xkfowboa - An obvious solution, except that Skritter already has my learning history and Anki doesn't!

Murryjames, snap! I have felt the same way for a little while now. I've also taken to writing things down on paper and taking long pauses of skritter activity.

I find writing out a row of a character, particularly something I'm having difficulty remembering, is not just good for handwriting but remembering and writing it efficiently if that makes sense.

I don't claim I'm anything other than at the beginning of this process as well. However today marks my 3 month anniversary on Skritter and I've allegedly learned 800 characters. Way more than I'm expected to have learned at my level in university.

I would quite like my in-class writing to be more legible so I think it's something to focus on. Still, I had doubts I'd actually be able to catch up on my hanzi now I think in terms of writing knowledge I'm among the best in the class and those young upstarts have been at it for years :-)

I have had the opposite experience. My handwriting in English has always been terrible, but my handwriting in Chinese is pretty good thanks to Skritter. (I've only studied Skritter for writing 汉字.)

I recently studied a book which helped my English handwriting quite a bit

http://www.fixitwrite.com

My wife was amazed by the immediate improvement. The key was simply slowing down and focusing on problematic elements; before I had simply been writing too fast and too carelessly.

It's easy to get into that habit with Skritter; we want to move on, so we write the character quickly. Instead, try writing characters as slowly and as correctly as possible.

As for the feature request, I'm with FatDragon, I'd like Skritter to wait until we've drawn the whole character before it gives hints or grades us.

James

You press 1-4 and it gives you that grade and moves on, regardless of whether you've finished or shown the prompt.

You can also press the "show" (S) button and toggle correctness with the "correct" (V) button, and then go next. Or press show and then 1-4.

The next button just goes to the next one. You start out being marked as correct until you're proven wrong.

We are doing poorly if no one in this thread but Skritterjohan knows how this works. So let me turn the tables, Murray James: how could we have made it more clear how the system works and that it can already do what you want?

For FatDragon's request, there can later be some improvements to the recognition when I build the component information in and we can recognize on the component level, but since I'm splitting that out from showing the decomps while practicing and not doing it now, no ETA on that.

Handwriting? But, if we stop and think - in real life, how much you need that? I am in a position of sales & marketing in Taiwan since 2007 - and hardly remember writing something else by hand except signing documents in bank and filling out landing card in airports.
I think this time is more valuable to use to learn typing characters on computer - e-mails and msn/skype - this is what we get in real life now. Again - everyone of us learn chinese for some reason, if it's for hobby, I would understand, caligraphy with a special tools etc, would be great, even relaxing experience, but how practical it is?

Nick - I did not know that I could enter a number grade and thereby skip it. From time to time I do hit the space bar to skip, though. I cannot answer for murrayjames but I know that I have developed patterns that work and I don't necessarily try out all the features of skritter (or anything) if I have routine that works. On the other hand, through the forum and the blog I have read about nifty things that help me out and I do try them and adapt. Don't despair - your features are good!

Rolands - Handwriting? Even if I'll never have beautiful calligraphy, I'd regret not making some effort towards better script. I do like being able to write something that's not just legible but also reasonably proportioned and flowing. Maybe I should settle just for something better than grade school style? Like others, I need practice writing on paper to write decently.

Rolands, in that case why learn how to Skritter at all? Aren't you kind of in the wrong place to advocate that view? :)

I was getting on just fine with Chinese on a computer. My vocab will always be many times larger than my ability to write. (Something like 5,000 chars vs 800)

Also, being able to write is an absolute requirement in education. You can't sit HSK without writing. You can't get into a Chinese university without HSK, or get a job in many areas.

If you've made the leap to being able to skritter, it's a short step to be able to write beautiful Chinese script and that in itself is intensely rewarding.

Lurks, I'd tend to agree with Roland for the most part. I don't think Skritter's main end product is just writing though. You get a lot more out of it - knowing the construction of characters through writing helps recognition, helps you understand the construction of vocab, helping your Chinese in general.

This is not to detract from your otherwise valid points, though.

@Nick: I know about the grading shortcut keys too! Although it did take 5 months before I realized you can use them _BEFORE_ you finished writing the character.

I partly blame the UI. The grading buttons do not appear until you have finished writing a character, so it seemed like grading could not be done until all strokes were recognized. I never used the space bar to skip a character since there were no UI hints that a grade had been assigned to the skipped character.

The rest I blame on using a tablet notebook. I use one hand to hold the touchscreen and the other hand to write, leaving my third hand to use keyboard shortcuts.

Now that I know the grading keys are preemptive, I've stopped complaining about certain strokes being difficult to recognize. I just go through one complete set of strokes and use the grading buttons if blue missed strokes showed up.

I was going to suggest a tutorial document, but I just noticed a tutorial link on the practice page. Either it's new, or I never noticed it because the practice button so prominently overshadows the links to the right. The next largest element on the page is the horizontal menu bar, and I've clicked on the Help tab many times, but it only takes me to a FAQ. I kinda expect tutorials, documentation, FAQ, support forms when I click on Help menus...

Also, I tend not to try out new features since I'm afraid of messing up my SRS statistics and possibly losing characters due to misgrading. I think I would have been more adventurous if I could switch into a test mode where I knew that whatever I did could be reset. In retrospect, it didn't matter, since I _know_ there are lots of iffy words that have slipped through the SRS algorithms and have not reappeared for months.

I also knew about these grading buttons but hadn't thought of a good use for them until klutz14159 mentioned writing a character without pausing for unrecognized strokes, then grading it yourself with the buttons to move on.

Great technique, thanks klutz!

@Nick - I loved the demo before I signed up. Perhaps you could add a power-user tutorial that goes through all of the advanced stuff (particularly keyboard shortcuts) and offers suggestions for studying (such as self-grading as mentioned here). That would help anybody who was interested in power-using to make the most of their Skritter time without the extra work of tracking down methods or trying to reinvent the wheel.

Lurks,

In fact, before skrittering I tried several ways to learn characters. It was pen-and-paper old way, it was hand made flash cards, it was Anki. And none of those ways gave me such a leap and progress as skritter did. Skritter is more than just writting - it's a way to learn characters. Moreover, we have here tones learning, and writing is greatly mixed with reading. Using pen-and-notebook style I learned 30 characters per week, and I was strugling to remember some of them. Now, am at the end of second month of Skrittering and I know more than 400 words, 470+ characters and what's most important - I am able to use them in my daily conversations! And that's because when I am doing tone practise I tend to say it out loud. In that way skrittering not just builds up character database - it builds up words database for speaking. For me getting the records like 1 character per 3 minutes is not important, I tend to overpractise, so 470 per 2 monthes i think is decent result.
And last but not least - speed. Here in skritter that happens much faster - crisis (it really exists, not just in news and finance websites), made some changes in company I work, and I am now loaded with work for those beeing fired due to crisis. I would never get such result with pen and paper.

Just to mention - I am learning traditional characters, so I would assume, that those who learn traditional ones, have statistical results characters more decent than those, who study simplified? Would be interesting to know such statistics...
At least time to write a one should be more.
Like one of professional words I need at my job: 光導纖維. Takes some time to write it in Skritter :).

@Rolands what job are you in? If I ever move to Taiwan I may have reason to say that too.

to be very exact - I am regional sales manager position for fiber optical networking access solutions manufacturer :)

klutz14159,

> The rest I blame on using a tablet notebook. I use one hand to hold the touchscreen and the other hand to write, leaving my third hand to use keyboard shortcuts.

My english is not my native language, but when I am trying to imagine this, I just can't imagine this.
How many hands do you have?

I think this is a good idea, to have a more full-fledged tutorial that explains all this stuff more. We built it so it could do that, actually. Maybe that'll clear things up when we build it.

Rolands, that's pretty interesting.

I guess I hadn't really thought of Skritter as a general kind of flashcardy-type teaching system. I learned thousands of characters with flashcards on a mobile and thought of Skritter purely for learning how to write.

I have to say, I still think a proper dictionary-based flashcard system is better than Skritter for these purposes. Mostly because actual dictionary entries have example sentences which are great to read aloud in the manner you describe.

Just saying that's what works for me and in no way detracting from using the Skritter the way you are. Always interesting to view things from another angle.

I think you mean that traditional statistics would be somewhat slower than simplified, rather than more decent. That would be interesting to know! In fact... that would be really very very very interesting to know. If only there was a way of looking at stats through an API for deeper analysis... oh wait! :)

As for me and Skritter, my teachers stopped showing me how to write new characters at the end of my first text book. Skritter has corrected several rather large errors in my characters that no one ever caught before. Thanks Skritter.

@Nick: Wow, that's cool. I should have tried that before I posted--I literally had no idea. Your question: What wasn't it clear? I think the answer lies in the scalable nature of your product. You have an interface that's intuitive enough for a kid to understand. On top of that, you add features to Skritter that cater to advanced users and extend its functionality. Inevitably some of these features will get lost in the shuffle.

I have a curious nature, but not so curious that I tinkered with the keyboards shortcuts to see what they all do. With people like me (who use Skritter in a fairly straightforward, basic way) curiosity isn't enough. You need to show us.

A tutorial Skritter's advanced features, new demo vids, perhaps?

Newbie here ..

I have been practicing writing for six years now with very modest progress at best. I only having been using Skritter for about seven hours over the course of week and my Hanzi has already improved as noticed by my Chinese wife. I believe the reason for this is that I'm now paying attention to the details of how the Skritter are drawn.

For instance the "middle" horizontal heng's of a Skritter character never touch the right side vertical shu's.The simplest example being the day character ri,日. Although the middle heng in the digital ri does connect each vertical side, when drawing/writing the character, there is a gap between it and the right side. This seems really adds to the aesthetic beauty of the characters like these.

This has slowed me down a bit but I'm sure over time I will pick up some speed.

As one writes a character in Skritter, each stroke gets morphed to where it should be. What I'd like is at the end of the character, to press a key which shows an overlay with where my strokes were (not where they ended up). I'd use the visual difference between the two to modify my writing for next time. That way, my character "balance" would improve.

@Rolands: I grew up near a nuclear reactor that kept leaking radioactive waste. All the excess radiation cause me to grow a third hand which comes in handy. These days, I'm trying to cut down on cellphone usage since I think I'm growing a third ear too.

Actually, your English is just fine. This was just an attempt at deadpan humor :-)

mjd, I have an idea for how I can easily test this out and see if it's cool. I've got it on my list of things to try, now. Thanks!

That's a good idea. I try to write strokes so they get morphed as little as possible but it's not really a powerful enough system to reinforce correct stroke shape.

Press Ctrl+Alt+D to turn this experimental mode on. When you write a character after turning it on, you should see the squigs you wrote fade in after you're done.

Mine look really bad.

Reality bites! Seriously though, this looks like a very promising modality.

crtl+alt_d is cool, you should turn it on for everyone (:

I've turned it off again, happy in the knowledge that my real life writing is prettier than my Skritter writing ;p.

cool. can you make it darker? I have trouble seeing the light gray.

Is the width displayed indicative of the resolution you are using in recognition? Or is it there just to make us feel bad by smudging all our strokes? :-)

If the former, I'm amazed at how much recognition you get out of the system. It would also explain why some hook strokes are hard to recognize, especially if we don't make a sharp enough angle.

Yes, I can make it darker.

In order to draw it as one stroke that can have alpha transparency, I have to throw away the width data I get when you draw it the first time--you can only see how wide it thinks things are before the squig is submitted, as you're drawing it. For a mouse, the width is determined by how fast you're doing it. For a Wacom with the plugin, it is based on how hard you're pressing.

With this mode, we can only see our strokes at the end. My writing using the Wacom in Microsoft Paint is much better, because I can see where the previous strokes were. Would it be possible in Ctrl-Alt-D mode to display the strokes as we draw them?

James

I second this suggestion - my strokes are rarely in the 'right' place at the beginning of writing an element of a character. With the current ctrl-alt-d mode, I usually see a big nasty offset where I started following Skritter's placement of the character, so it ends up looking worse than it actually is. Seeing my ink while I write would encourage me to write with more consistency of stroke placement, even if it's not all right by Skritter's standards.

Then again, I don't really use this mode much anyway. I would like to be able to write purely in ink before seeing any of Skritter's strokes (though I recognize that this is only a remote possibility due to the recognition nightmares it would cause), but seeing the ink along with the stroke doesn't really help me. My purpose isn't to improve my handwriting, though (that's what 写字本 are for), but rather to avoid the false positives that you get when you get a character right because you recognize quirks of the stroke placement. Some examples from my study would be 寄 vs 集, which I often mix up, but I can easily figure which one I need to write from the success or failure of my first stroke, or remembering the last two strokes of 镇 because the 直 element is compressed to leave some extra space for them.

Instead of leaving squigs showing while you're writing, I'd prefer to have this feature stay how it is and wait for the component-based recognition, which would actually hold recognition off until later. I don't really want to encourage anyone to write slowly so as to make it pretty.