Ok, I just found out I have been writing the last stroke of the water primitive wrong all along (am at frame 1855 now), i.e. from north to south (or more specifically north-east to south-west) when I checked something on Yamasa Online Dictionary which indicated it should be the opposite..

Am I the only one who does this?

I discovered around 2500-2600 range that I had be writing 女 in the wrong order. Pretty stupid too because I already knew about く　ノ　一.

Also recently discovered that I had been writing the cave primitive and house primitive in the wrong order, my fault for being a little less thorough than I thought and not looking carefully at the book.

Just have to make sure you correct your mistakes and hope you don't repeat it later when you get lazy.

I was doing 金 wrong all the time until I was corrected in class. I used yamasa for every character too. Brain must have been off

It's ok dude, a mistake is a mistake, everyone makes mistakes.

I've just checked, and I've been doing the same thing for water, and for cliff. But for some reason I write cave in the correct order. Oh well, I'm sure they're easily fixable.

I just checked and 金 is not 100% either. ***** shit *****.

Others were all okay, though.

I've become paranoia now.

What is the stroke order for claw 爪 and or melon 瓜. I had been writing claw 爪 with the same start as cliff but because mellon was listed in the same chapter as the drag primitive I'm doubting claw and thus melon.

Neither are listed in the Yamasa Kanji Dictionary nor my JEDict.

I did the water primitive thing for like half of RtK as well as other similar mistakes.

Some stroke order websites unfortunately have misleading animations that do not actually show the stroke being drawn. But due to how the brain works, if you expect a stroke to be drawn a certain way that's what you'll see and that reinforces the mistakes. When I found out about it I was really annoyed and since then I've been more careful. Also if you suspect something is wrong, check some other sites, even Yamasa has a few mistakes.

I'm sure I write plenty of kanji with the wrong stroke order. Not really sure what difference it makes(except 女 looks worse when I write it properly).

aaronvanvalen Wrote:I've become paranoia now.

What is the stroke order for claw 爪 and or melon 瓜. I had been writing claw 爪 with the same start as cliff but because mellon was listed in the same chapter as the drag primitive I'm doubting claw and thus melon.

Neither are listed in the Yamasa Kanji Dictionary nor my JEDict.

The first stroke of claw (and melon) goes from right to left. The horizontal stroke of "cliff" goes left to right. So you have been doing claw and melon wrong.

WWJDIC kanji look up http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-b...dic.cgi?1B will give you one or two versions of stroke order diagram in the results page (SOD and SODA). Direction is not always clear on the SOD versions, but in the SODA the beginning of each stroke is marked with red.

yukamina Wrote:I'm sure I write plenty of kanji with the wrong stroke order. Not really sure what difference it makes(except 女 looks worse when I write it properly).

Don't worry, you're not the only one I've written 女 differently since I was a kid, because the 'proper' order looks like crap to me.

Speaking of stroke order, you guys really shouldn't fret or be paranoid that you're doing a character in the incorrect stroke. Stroke order is just a learning tool, like training wheels, and once you reach a certain level you really need to decide for yourself what orders etc work best for you individually. It's useful as a beginner, but at the advanced stages you can dismiss it if you want. Many Japanese don't always use the 'official' order, because they find a way that works best for them.

Another issue with stroke order, is that there simply isn't a single, universal and correct way to write things. Kanji have evolved and been cultivated in so many different regions in Asia that there are almost always many different ways to write a single character. Even a simple character like 何 has two 'official' stroke orders!

No one is going to be staring at you write and scream, "INCORRECT STROKE ORDER!" if you do it wrong, so don't worry about it. A lot of the 'official' stroke orders are also not always the most effective and fast. Especially some of the longer and more complex characters sometimes have very stupid and illogical stroke orders. Remember, people invented stroke orders, not gods many of them are flawed, and it's up to you to use whichever you find easiest, fastest, and prettiest.

Aijin Wrote:[
A lot of the 'official' stroke orders are also not always the most effective and fast. Especially some of the longer and more complex characters sometimes have very stupid and illogical stroke orders. Remember, people invented stroke orders, not gods many of them are flawed

Blasphemy!

aaronvanvalen Wrote:Ok, I just found out I have been writing the last stroke of the water primitive wrong all along (am at frame 1855 now), i.e. from north to south (or more specifically north-east to south-west) when I checked something on Yamasa Online Dictionary which indicated it should be the opposite..

Am I the only one who does this?

Same mistake writing water... Thanks for pointing.

Aijin Wrote:Speaking of stroke order, you guys really shouldn't fret or be paranoid that you're doing a character in the incorrect stroke. Stroke order is just a learning tool, like training wheels, and once you reach a certain level you really need to decide for yourself what orders etc work best for you individually. It's useful as a beginner, but at the advanced stages you can dismiss it if you want. Many Japanese don't always use the 'official' order, because they find a way that works best for them.

Wow... This is kinda shocking to me... The world will never be the same...

I guess I'm sort of a perfectionist, and in the end I would rather do it 'right' than 'wrong' even if teh terms are debatable irrelevant.

But I remember that when I learned 女 from Heisig I realized I had been writing it in the wrong order. Now that I've gotten used to the real one, I can't remember what my former was or why I would prefer it over this. It's all what you're used to.

Also, thanks Pengolin.

Well the Roman alphabet also has an official "stroke order" which the majority of people either ignore or can't remember. I'm sure the same is true of Japanese. Unless you're doing calligraphy or being assessed the only thing that matters is that it's legible.

aaronvanvalen Wrote:But I remember that when I learned 女 from Heisig I realized I had been writing it in the wrong order. Now that I've gotten used to the real one, I can't remember what my former was or why I would prefer it over this.

At first I found it easier to draw it with two strokes, almost like a tilted 'L' and and rounded '7'. Perhaps that's how you also used to do it? The official order looks a lot more stylish when you get accustomed to it though.

Some foreigners have told me that they like using the 'correct' stroke orders because the motions are often the reverse of the motions writing the English alphabet, so that they get a "Japanesey" feeling doing it the correct way. I dunno about that, but I guess some people prefer it for that reason.

Everyone is unique and individual, and I've always thought it absurd to try to systemize a 'correct' method when different orders and motions work better/faster for different people. The truth is that a lot of us Japanese don't really even care that much about stroke order. People will finish the box before writing the inside strokes in characters like 國 all the time. Nobody can tell what stroke order you used just from looking at it.

Many stroke orders exist because it allows the character to be written quickly, with minimal movement, and allows you to end in a position ready to write the following character. However, there are definitely stroke orders that don't make sense, and end up wasting motion and time. I can't remember too many examples of this, but most people I know don't use the 'official' stroke order for 龜 because it's slower and more wasteful of movement than other orders.

I think that for beginners it's great to learn the orders, otherwise they might end up learning to write very ineffectively and slowly, but after you understand all the basics you can decide for yourself.

i completely agree with Aijin, the order in which you write a character is your own business and no-one else's... however, knowing the correct order is important when a) your writing is very cursive-y (familiar stroke order makes it easy to understand), b) you use hand-writing recognition software often (they tend to recognize official stroke order faster/with higher accuracy) or c) you're writing calligraphy, in which case turning a right-to-left stroke into a left-to-right stroke can really mess up the look.
so, it's always good to know the official stroke order, but it's rarely necessary.

I agree with Aijin and I've mentioned it in several topics before. Stroke order is a guideline, it teaches you the system of how to write kanji. If you don't know the system and use the wrong stroke order, your kanji will look horrible; however, once you know this system, you don't have to keep memorizing stroke order.

The Ipod/Iphone's chinese character recognition system (they don't have a kanji one) is very very strict on stroke order. For instance, the King kanji (don't have Japanese input here, sorry) REQUIRES the two horizontal strokes first, as opposed to one horizontal, one vertical, then the rest.