Why do the kanji pictures right below the number differ from the one's in the drawing sequence?
Which one am I supposed to follow?

They vary in many small places. Especially like road which has that weird squiggly in the one given underneath the number and then there's that 3-like shape instead when it shows the sequence in which you're supposed to write it in. Or for example water, when it is to the left.


-Saborkan

You should write them like the ones directly below the story (there's also an appendix that shows proper written form.) The ones to the left of the story (directly below the number) are the typeset form.

As you go on, you'll find there are basically three forms of every kanji - pencil form (which is what RTK shows you how to do), typeset form (which is what's on the left and what your flashcards will show you unless you set your software up to do something special), and brush form (which you can find computer fonts for and sometimes see written examples of).

Beyond those basic 3 forms, of course, there are various stylized fonts used for branding, etc, as well as calligraphic styles.

Anyway, if you know how to write kanji properly in pencil strokes, then normal brushstroke writings are easy to recognize, they differ only in tiny amounts of angle and length. Typeset forms do pretty much require memorizing a handful of 'printed forms' like water and road, but fortunately there's not too many of these. Calligraphy and stylized fonts can be deciphered if you've seen enough examples of handwritten forms and different reasonably normal fonts.

Ah, thank you. This is pretty much precisely what I wanted to know. Thank you for such a complete answer.

-Saborkan

I have one further question. Are there some guidelines about how exact I should be in writing the characters? For example, even for many of the kanji for which I remember the primitives order, I miss the length of strokes and transformations of elements. Should I attempt to be "perfect" in this regard or is there a natural variation in writing?

And, furthermore, why does the order of drawing the primitives matter? In some cases, it is easier to write them in that way and possibly looks cleaner, but I can think of no reason for it to be strictly necessary.

-Saborkan

Imho, that depends. There are rules for transformations too, you'll get them after awhile. But length is sometimes relevant for kanji like "dispose". In those cases, it's better to hit fail.

Well the order matters for calligraphy mostly, but also it allows your muscle memory to separate things (for example "hand" and "fur"). Plus when you'll meet unknown kanji in the wild, if you've always learned the same stroke order for writing certain primitives, you'll draw them without even looking up the order. Once you've learn the correct way, it's hard to unlearn.

And if you don't worry about the stroke order, just don't let anyone watch while you write. Once or twice, I've been told "that's wrong" in reference to a kanji I've used, and it turned out they were talking about stroke order rather than whether or not I used the right kanji. Had they not watched me write it, they wouldn't have known the difference (rarely can you tell what stroke order something was written in after the fact).

six8ten Wrote:(rarely can you tell what stroke order something was written in after the fact).

Well, -I- can't tell, but those well versed in the details of writing the characters can, although perhaps not when the characters are written in ballpoint pen. Although I can't tell right from wrong to look at it, I can see that there -are- tiny differences when writing with pencil or felt-tip pen (and obviously more with a brush).

I managed to get a different instructor back in the day, but there was an instructor at my University who could tell when students in his class used wrong stroke order in their kanji practice sheets, at least well enough to put fear into them and make them believe he could spot one misplaced stroke in a pageful of kanji.

On the other hand, practically speaking... given what I've seen in some examples of native handwriting from time to time, it's hard to imagine an out-of-order stroke being a worse mistake than some of the messes they write themselves.

The most important reason for using correct stroke order though is of course for brush writing... even if you don't -do- any, it's easier to -read- brush writing if you are using correct stroke order yourself, particularly stylized brush writing that doesn't look a whole lot like pencil form.

The "messes" they write are legible **Because** of the stroke order.

If you don't get the stroke order right, and you start move away from a slow, carefull, line-for-line block style, your handwriting would probably be barely legible.

If you don't care, then that's fine. If you want to focus on other aspects of the language that's fine, but in those cases, it is still a bad idea to even bother writing if you're going to do it wrong. It would be better to just not waste your time doing it and spend it on the other parts of the language.

If you're going to expend a significant amount of effort in learning to write the characters, you might as well pay attention to the stroke order. At first it may seem difficult but after a while it becomes pretty automatic except for some tricky kanji (and native speakers can't always tell small mistakes in stroke order).

I want to second Yudanyaiteki

It seems silly to spend a large amount of time learning to write Japanese but not put in the small amount of extra effort to learn the correct stroke order. It is something that has become easier to learn nowdays because of the ease of looking up characters. For example both the Kanji in Context and Official RTk app give stroke order, as do most online dictionaries.

The Japanese put a lot of emphasis on penmanship, despite the revolution in office technology, so if you ever do have to write, good handwriting will hold you in good stead. I believe, for instance, some documents still have to be written by hand. Your character is judged by your characters!

Depending on what you want to do with your Japanese, this may or may not matter to you.

I freely confess my own writing looks terrible and stroke order causes me a great deal of trouble, there seem to be so many exceptions to the rules given here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_order

I am looking for a good book on ペン字 ( ペン じ) These are books, for the Japanese market, containing exercises in writing kanji using ballpoint pens. If anyone has one they like, could they post it's title here. Any further advice on learning correct stroke count would also be most welcome.