Joined: May 2008
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Heh, took me a while to figure out what you're talking about.. And I'm still not certain.
Are you referring to that 3 pixel width dot a bit above the slash? That's just the *day* kanji being exposed where the long slash had been drawn over it.
I wouldn't worry about it. Primitives seem to be redrawn for every single kanji they appear in, so they never are exactly identical to each other.
Joined: Oct 2007
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Are you referring to a drop between 土 and 日? In that case I bet you are running Vista and are getting newer Japanese fonts. Another example is 辻 (two dots in Vista, one in XP). Nothing to worry about really.
Joined: Feb 2007
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When 者 is part of another kanji you sometimes see an extra "drop".
The drop does not appear on any of the 1945 Joyo kanji.
Outside the Joyo kanji it is quite common. Whether it appears depends on the font you are using, and on the individual character.
賭 is not a Joyo kanji, and the drop is font-dependent.
If you have a recent Mac, try comparing the Hiragino Mincho Pro and Hiragino Mincho ProN fonts.
Joined: Apr 2010
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Just got to this one myself, so thanks for this thread.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know how / why these variants happen? I assume Japanese people easily read both, but which one would they be taught to write? Do extra strokes generally signify older forms?
Joined: Oct 2009
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Variants in kanji happened just because there were no standards a long time ago; of those 50,000-80,000 kanji in the huge dictionaries, the vast majority of them are simply variant forms of other characters.
The Touyou and Jouyou kanji list specified which variant form of a character would be considered standard, but kanji not on the Jouyou list have no officially standard forms, even if they contain other Jouyou kanji in them. So for instance, you will see 掴 or 摑 in modern Japanese texts, despite the fact that the Jouyou list specifies 国 as the official form, not 國.
