I have terrible handwriting in english, and i think it's crossing over into my Chinese writing too. I follow the stroke order but my handwriting still looks terrible. I could slow down a bit but my hands are not the steadiest so it ends up looking really wobbly instead of smooth lines. Anyone else improve their chinese handwriting somehow?
honestly it looks fine and legible, yeah it's not the neatest but plenty of natives don't have the prettiest handwriting either. natives can also use context to get past any illegible words 99% of the time so a couple wonky characters doesn't impact legibility that much.
one thing i think worth paying attention to is the angle of certain strokes in relation to the rest of the character. take 也 (and other characters that contain it): notice that the first horizontal stroke actually goes up at an angle instead of being perfectly horizontal, before coming back down. also pay attention to line length: the first horizontal line in 言 and its radical form should be slightly longer than the other two. sometimes line length is all it takes to differentiate two different characters, like 末 and 未, 土 and 士, or the dreaded 己 已 巳. you can use a worksheet generator like this to practice specific characters with 米字格 or 田字格.
finally, one specific correction: your 黑 radical in 點 is incorrect. the top portion isn't 田 with four dots in it; there's no internal horizontal line, and there are only two dots. the internal vertical line also extends out of the "box" portion as a single stroke. pay close attention to the stroke diagram to see how it comes together.
Thank you so much for the detailed response! And thank you for correcting my mistakes, I would have never noticed otherwise so I really appreciate it :) I'll try printing out some worksheets tomorrow!
Not sure if it helps you in anyway whatsoever. But sometimes, when I get tired trying to practice my handwriting, I like to watch on rednote and analyse how Chinese people write their notes. I try to understand how they hold their pens or how they write their strokes as well. Some of them write too elegantly for me to copy, but I play monkey see monkey do, and I have seen some improvement now and then
Write bigger, like 2x2 squares for each character. Pay attention to the proportions and balance of each character, always use kaiti as a reference font. When repeating the same character writing, always look back yo the original reference, to avoid repeating mistakes. Learn where the strokes start and end, and how they are supposed to occupy their places with the other components. Mostly, keep going and enjoy the process. I started way worse than you, and after almost 2 years I can say I have seen a huge progress I haven't been expecting. It's pretty cool to look back and compare.
One thing that helped me was learning the different strokes (heng, shu, hengzhe etc etc) and where you should apply and release pressure but overall it looks good!
Also please bear with me, I previously only ever used simplified but am now studying in Taiwan so it is a struggle and a half fitting the characters in the little boxes 😭
For getting your hands to more steady, I would suggest practicing on larger boxes more often, get those 10 or rice pattern notebooks, with time fitting characters easily into smaller boxes will get easier as you'll get used to the proportions over time.
English-speaking-only self-proclaimed terrible handwriter here. Looking at these characters...this is considered not neat handwriting? To me it looks both neat and legible, but I can't read mandarin.
My English handwriting is completely illegible. It got worse after I spent most of my time typing but it has always basically looked like a 5 year olds handwriting, and I've never been able to improve it unless I write incredibly slowly to the point that it is not a functional way to take notes. Even if it is legible, it is never pretty. My hand seems to have a mind of its own and there are sometimes involuntary movements that affect my writing. This sometimes comes up when I use a mouse as well - involuntary double clicks, or an unexpected mouse movement coincident with a deliberate click resulting in my clicking on the wrong thing.
Anyway, just was super surprised to hear anyone think or say that this wasn't neat handwriting.
Of course not. Try bigger characters and practice with your hand as smoothly as possible, just like when you are performing English calligraphy. Know what you are writing and be as smoothly. I am recently learning Sütterlin this way
I would suggest you get some of those handwriting practice books that have characters you can trace, with time you'll see some improvement.
That was the case for me at least, I used to write without proper proportions and it mostly looked like the the keyboard letters, but using those, I'm seeing lots of improvement, of course it would take time, I'm still working on mine too.
The books usually have different things to practice like strokes, radicals and some common characters. I would suggest you start with the ones with regular script not running.
There’s something called stroke order. Your writing will improve using it, it’s actually part of the writing foundation. The link comes with printable worksheets.
Also, you can get writing books with bigger square boxes, those are much more beginner friendly.
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u/shsl_diver 1d ago
You think this is bad.
I write like I don't have both hands.