probably been mentioned before but it would be extremely useful. Basically for characters that have more than one tone it would be useful if in the definition slot the different meanings were shown next to their respective tone. The present system doesn't clearly show which meaning refers to which tone and so it frequently happens that i give the wrong tone for a character that I supposedly know (but actually don't).

I think I am right in saying that Scritter tries to do this to some extent by using a ; to divide the meanings, but the problem for me is that it just looks too similar to definitions of characters that have one tone. It would be much clearer if the two words (since they are most of the time in effect two different words) were shown separately in some way.

For example the system on mbdg is clear, effective and efficient in my opinion and something similar here would be a great improvement.

Cheers

I agree. I mostly end up looking characters with two different readings up on mdbg on principle because often on skritter it's not clear if there is no difference in usage or if the definitions were just not properly entered into skritter with all the "," and ";"s in the right places.
Also sometimes the definitions will be divided properly, but I later learn that they were not in the same order as the pinyin, so I learned it exactly wrong.

@Antimacassar actually the ; doesn't divide meanings by tones, it's the comma. That is, if you see

寧 [宁] (medium)
níng, nìng
peaceful; tranquil; serene, rather; prefer; Ningxia autonomous region (abbr.)

that means that níng means "peaceful; tranquil; serene" while nìng means "rather; prefer; Ningxia autonomous region (abbr.)" Which actually looks wrong to me, I think the abbreviation should be on the níng side, no?

James

James, yes it should be 2nd tone.

I guess the comma clears things up.

But I still think it would be better if they were separated in some way. I guess, like inkubus says, i am not also never entirely sure that the definition is correct/in the right place etc.

In a face saving exercise I have been scrittering for one hour and have identified 6 characters that either don't have a comma, definition doesn't mention the other pronunciations or some other pronunciation/definition problem relating to the tone.

Although I guess the present system is pretty good as it stands (as long as the definition is accurate) I still think some kind of division of the words according to the tone would be clearer and also might lead to less confusion (especially for people learning simplified characters).

For the record these are the characters (correct ((or not if u see what i mean)) at time of writing, I think :S)

唉,扁,吭,翘,劈,踏

@Antimacassar if you see errors/omissions in the definitions, definitely send them in via the "feedback" link on the practice page. The Skritter guys are really good about following up. If you know what the correct definition should be, you can also put that in to replace the definition and check "share as a correction".

James

I still have it on my list to try converting those commas into newlines for the practice page, although that formatting area has gotten pretty hairy, so I haven't tackled it yet.

Sometimes the different definitions and readings can't line up exactly. Some definitions go with multiple readings, for example. In these cases, it may be best to focus on each reading of the character in the context of a different example word using it.

But as James said, if there's a mistake in the reading/definition comma alignment for a character, and the definitions could line up better, do feedback it so we can get them straightened up a bit.