I thought that I had finally figured out when 下さい is written with kanji and when without as ください. Generally if ください is used as a verb meaning ' to give' it's used with kanji, while when used with the て-form of another verb it's written in kana. I know this usage differs somewhat by author though.

But then a couple weeks ago I was waxing my snowboard and read the package just for the fun of it:

子供の手の届かない所に保管してください、万が一、飲み込んでしまった場合には速やかに医者に手当てを受けて下さい。その際に必ず医者にパッケージもしくはこのラベルを見せるようにして下さい

There's three ～てください's in here. One with する and no written without kanji. One with 受ける and with kanji, and then a last one again with する but with kanji!

I don't understand why any author of any text would once use the word without kanji and once with kanji in an almost identical context within the same text!

Am I missing a subtle different here, or do the Japanese just love confusing me with their random kanji usage?

下さい is just one of those words that is written in both hiragana and kanji, depending on the level of formality of the text, and the relative laziness of the writer.

There's also 達 and 為, amongst others.

Sure but why then would a person write both version in the same context in one text? That's some serious lack of consistency

Besides that the 'lazyness' idea doesn't make that much sense anymore now the Japanese have IME, it doesn't actually take longer to write either of the two versions. And in fact due to the simplicity of the kanji it might actually be shorter to write it with kanji.

phoenix Wrote:Sure but why then would a person write both version in the same context in one text? That's some serious lack of consistency

Besides that the 'lazyness' idea doesn't make that much sense anymore now the Japanese have IME, it doesn't actually take longer to write either of the two versions. And in fact due to the simplicity of the kanji it might actually be shorter to write it with kanji.

Well, if you notice when using the IME, some kanji don't always appear with the first push of the spacebar. I would say whoever typed this passage just didn't take the time to arrow over to ください and push the spacebar one more time to get the kanji to appear in the first sentence.

And so, yeah, in that context I would still refer to it as laziness.

You're thinking about it too much. Kanji use is a fun element of stylistic license pretty exclusive to Japanese. It's fluid. It's a way to emphasize or deemphasize, lengthen or shorten a section of text, achieve visual balance within a passage between the three scripts, create intentional ambiguity with the use of hiragana that could hold multiple nuances, provide explicit clarity with kanji that could not, or make a pun. Don't need to think about it too much more than that.

QuackingShoe Wrote:You're thinking about it too much. Kanji use is a fun element of stylistic license pretty exclusive to Japanese. It's fluid. It's a way to emphasize or deemphasize, lengthen or shorten a section of text, achieve visual balance within a passage between the three scripts, create intentional ambiguity with the use of hiragana that could hold multiple nuances, provide explicit clarity with kanji that could not, or make a pun. Don't need to think about it too much more than that.

Although I agree completely with everything you've said, I don't think that the text on phoenix's snowboard, where it has 保管してください at the beginning and 見せるようにして下さい at the end, is using/not using kanji to achieve any of these things.

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A little off-topic, but when you mentioned puns, it reminded me of an okonomiyaki restaurant near my house. Instead of 年中無休 written on its billboard, it has 年中夢球.

haha, clever. I like that a lot.

phoenix Wrote:Generally if ください is used as a verb meaning ' to give' it's used with kanji, while when used with the て-form of another verb it's written in kana.

That's the theory as far as I know.

phoenix Wrote:I don't understand why any author of any text would once use the word without kanji and once with kanji in an almost identical context within the same text!

Because most people simply don't know or care about such small details. Only the most pedantic will insist on the rule being followed, most people will just use one or the other without thinking about it.

Codexus Wrote:

phoenix Wrote:I don't understand why any author of any text would once use the word without kanji and once with kanji in an almost identical context within the same text!

Because most people simply don't know or care about such small details. Only the most pedantic will insist on the rule being followed, most people will just use one or the other without thinking about it.

I don't think this is true at all. Good authors (and I'm referring to the ones who write books, not the ones who write snowboard wax inserts) put great care into the way their prose is written, but the thing is, there is no solid "rule" most of the time dictating whether to use kanji or not in any given place.

I have noticed several times reading a text that an author uses kanji for a word one moment and writes it in kana soon afterward. I really think it's just the author's way of mixing it up, the way we will substitute different synonyms of a word to avoid monotony.