I'm studying independantly for an A level in Japanese. The mark scheme for previous years said that a lot of candidates lost marks because they didn't understand how to use the squared paper correctly. This may be just because the wrote horizontally or something, but I'm a bit confused about how to write small っs　ゃs etc when writing on squared paper. Do you squeeze them in with the character they affect or do you give them a whole square of their own? Also, if you do give them a whole square, where do you write them? (e.g. top right corner etc)

Another thing I'm wondering is what's the normal way of starting a knew paragraph? Do you just start a new line, or do you leave an indentation? What if the last line of the previous paragraph is complete?

Thanks for any help. I did try googling but failed miserably.

You give them a whole square, and write them on the top right corner. For paragraphs, you start a new line and indent by one empty square. There are many other rules. For example, dots and commas also get a whole square, unless they appear just after a line break; in this case, you squeeze them in the previous square. Etc.

The Japanese Wikipedia has a very brief section about these rules:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/j...D.E6.96.B9

This reminds me, I was told this: As for small っ　and ょ　and the like, when writing vertically you should place them on the right of a new square, when writing horizontally on the lower half of a new square.

this is what i used for class.

http://faculty.palomar.edu/ftachibana/ab...oyoshi.htm

yeh we have to write with these same papers in all of my Japanese classes

Thanks for all the replies they're really helpful. There's just one thing I'm still confused about; when enclosing something in speech marks,　like 「この例」, do you give the 　「 and the 」 a whole box of their own? Both links seem to say that they should have a box of their own unless they come at the end of a line, but the one kainzero linked to shows a full stop sharing a box with an end qoute. Is this just for punctuation? A mistake? Does it apply to other small characters like　っ　or romaji?

The ”「”　and ”」” follow the same rules as the other symbols. Thus is ”だ” is the last letter in a "part of speech" then it would be ”だ。」” all occupying one square.

I might be wrong in the interpretation of your question. You have to consider the written letters first before deciding where to put the ”。」” If the column has enough room you place it in its own box, but when it doesn't then you include it with the last letter. To put simply you don't start a new column with a punctuation such as ”」” or ”。”.

Google 原稿用紙 and 使い方. You can find tons of websites teaching how to write Japanese properly with "the squared paper."

Note that while Japanese kids do learn the so-called "standard" way to put characters "properly" such as how to handle symbols and little characters like っ, it's not used by writers in real life; it's not standard at all outside of elementary school. In fact, there are many styles when it comes to use of squared paper. For example, you can easily spot a novelist-wannabe who had no proper training because they typically follow the rules they learned in elementary school and break every convention among experienced writers.

I'm not sure what style they expect you to follow. But if they don't give their own guide, probably it's ok as long as you follow a major one. Maybe it's fine as long as your own style doesn't look too weird to them. Or simply they don't know what they're talking about.

Anyway, there's a set of rules which are nearly universal across styles. It's hard to list them all because a lot of them are too obvious to people who had education in Japan, so if I missed important ones in the following guide, please don't blame me!

First, we begin with the fundamentals.

You write vertically. Never use it horizontally. Ever. (Unless it's a special paper for horizontal use or you're asked to do so, of course.)

One box corresponds to one character. Special characters such as "っ", 'ぃ", "、", "。", and "「" also get their own boxes. But the circle or double stroke on the top right of a letter as in ぴ and び should be put in the same box as its corresponding character. So 「きっと、彼はばかだ」takes 11 boxes (6 usual kana including ば and だ + 1 kanji + 4 others 「」っ、). Exceptions are explained later.

Also, characters like "っ", "ゃ", "ゅ", "ょ", "ぁ", "ぃ", "ぅ", "ぇ", "ぉ" (These are smaller versions as in sentence わぁっと言った), "、" (Japanese comma), "。" (Japanese period), and "「" (opening quotation mark (Note that this guy gets rotated 90 degrees clockwise in the vertical writing)) are put roughly in the top right quarters of their own boxes. The rotated "」" (closing quotation mark) occupies roughly the bottom left quarter of a box. I might have missed some characters, but I think all others use boxes in full like your average kana. Now if you look at real examples of vertical writing carefully, the horizontal bar of a quotation mark is often longer and spans nearly the full width of a box. If you want them to look authentic handwriting, mimic those examples.

The title of your work is typically either on the first or second line. You put a few spaces before the title like a vertical indent. So the first few blocks of the first (or second if you start it from there) vertical line are left blank. If you want to go with the elementary school way, put three vertical blanks on the first line and start your title from the forth box.

Your name goes to the next line of the title line, so it's typically on the second or third line. The important thing is that you put your name at around the bottom of the vertical line. A typical way is to start your name so there remain one or two blanks at the bottom. If your name takes up 10 characters, you start from 11 or so boxes from the bottom. Note that typically you're supposed to put a blank box between your first and last names. So 山田太郎 takes 5 boxes plus one or two blank boxes after that. Again, if you follow the elementary school style, you put exactly one box between your given and family names and leave exactly one box at the bottom of your name line, which must be the second vertical line of the paper.

Of course, if there are specified places to put your name and title (of your work) somewhere else on your paper, use your common sense. You may not need to put your name etc. inside the paper.

The body text usually starts from the next line or the next to the next line with one vertical line left blank. Some people put a few blank lines. Your average elementary school teacher would force you to start immediately after the name, so it should be the third vertical line of the paper. The most important is that, whatever style you follow, you put one blank box at the top of this line. So your text starts at the second box from the top. Don't use the first box of the first line for your text unless you're writing in an unusual way (e.g., the very first line is dialogue). The top boxes of the subsequent lines are ok to be used for characters.

Now you can start writing your text.

When you start a new paragraph, you start in the next new line as if you line-broke vertically. A new paragraph always starts at the second box from the top with the first box being blank space; this is essentially the reason why you started your text from the second top box after your name. Think of this as a vertical indent that must be put at the beginning of every paragraph.

Don't put a blank line when you start a new paragraph. For example, each paragraph of this post follows a blank horizontal line after a line break because it's in English. But you normally don't do this when starting a new paragraph in squared paper. Simply start it from the second box of the immediately following line. If you put a blank vertical line before a new paragraph, it carries a special meaning, which you probably don't need to learn until you want to write something much more advanced.

Next, we go over some important rules which only appear in rare occasions.

When you're writing Japanese, sometimes you want to start or end a vertical line with a symbol like "、" or little letter like "っ". In this case, the elementary school manner dictates that you never put those minor guys at the first box of a line. And typically they don't allow you to use the margin of the paper. So you're supposed to write a full-fledged character and minor guy in the same last box of a line. Hence, if one line so happens to end with す of sentence 私は馬鹿です。, then the final box of this line gets both "す" and "。" Never do this other than at the end of a vertical line.

The thing is that this merging is considered a bad manner by many outside of grade school. The normal practice of writers, professional and amateur alike, is called ぶら下がり, where you use the margin of the bottom of the paper. You simply put "。" or whatever outside the vertical line as if there is an invisible box. ぶら下がり is the most common and accepted by almost everyone except the ignorant. Even the Japanese version of Microsoft Word has the ぶら下がり option to mimic this common practice. I recommend you go with this unless you're sure that the intended reader doesn't respect how squared paper is used in real life but somehow wants to grade your paper by his own standards, which is sadly common.

There are some minor variations about which special character can be ぶら下がり'd. But I think you can go with the simplest rule, i.e., you dangle any symbols or little character in the margin if needs be. If someone subtracts a point because you didn't follow his minor personal style choice, you should flip the bird and put the digit in his ass.

In rare occasions, you might find yourself wanting to use non-Japanese symbols such as "？" and "！". Generally speaking, these should be avoided in careful writing. But sometimes you do need them, e.g., you're wiring a young-adult novel in pseudo-spoken language. If you think you really need to use those non-Japanese symbols, always put a blank box after you use it. So, your text should look like:

ここだよ！　ここにいるよ！　ここだってばー！ うーん、聞こえないのかなぁ……

If the final box gets "！" and such, you don't need to do ぶら下がり for this additional space (It doesn't make much sense to put a blank space in the margin if you're handwriting anyway.). You don't put additional space if "？" and such ends with a closing quotation mark either, e.g.,

「なんだって？」

is correct. You don't write 「なんだって？　」because the additional space rule doesn't apply in this case.

Notice how I used "……" in the previous example. This is roughly (but not exactly) the same as the English "..." mark as in "*sigh* I think I suck at Japanese..." Unlike in English, you use 6 dots in Japanese. In squared paper, one box has three dots so that そうか…… takes 5 boxes in total (3 for kana and 2 for ……). Each three dot set is called 三点リーダー. When writing vertically, these dots go in the middle of the box while, as you can see from examples in this post, they're kind of at the bottom of a line when written horizontally. Since you're using square paper vertically, you write three dots so that they form a line passing through the center of the box. In your average Japanese input system, you can get it by kanjifying りーだー. Depending on your system, you might be able to get it from "。" or other symbols too. In any case, always use it as a pair so you get 6 dots in two consecutive boxes.

You need the extra space after the pair of three dots too just like you do when you use "！" and the like.

The dash as a symbol (i.e., — which is NOT for long vowels) also uses two boxes. You draw a long line spanning two boxes passing through the centers of them:

そこにはもうーー意外と思うかもしれないがーー彼の姿はなかった。 is correct (ーー represents a one long line using two boxes here.).

えーっとねー、それはねー、うーんとねぇー、わかんないや。is also correct because these bars are not dashes.

As you can see, you don't use an extra blank box for a dash or long vowel bar.

You might end up needing the two box guys like …… and ーー at the end of a vertical line so you don't know if you should split it to read:

（random text here）そうか…
…　それは困ったな。

or if you should do the ぶら下がり thing:

（random text here）そうか……
それは困ったな。

or (if か is there at the final box of the line) if it should be:

（random text here）そうか
……　それは困ったな。

What should I do?? The answer is, "Yes." Which means you got bucked. No fixed rule for this kind of stuff. The best way is to reword your sentence, avoid using non-Japanese symbols or follow your instinct.

You usually write numbers in kanji in vertical writing. And you can split large numbers with multiple digits if it's at the end of a line, e.g.,

(random text) 千八百
九十五

is ok to mean "(random text) 千八百九十五."

But if you do need to use Arabic numbers or the Latin alphabet (e.g., you're working on translating a scientific work with numbers which shouldn't be in kanji or kana because of the convention in science), it's generally considered bad to split them. Like any other case where you get bucked by non-Japanese symbols, you should come up with a solution for yourself on the fly.

Also note that the Latin alphabet, Arabic numbers, etc. are usually of half-size, which means you put two letters in one box. So the word "English" requires only 4 boxes: En-gl-is-h. An important thing is that you write these letters rotated 90 degrees clockwise. So "B" looks like your grandma's boobs. If you're still not sure which direction you should rotate them in, it's the direction so you don't need to tilt your head to read emoticons like ;P.

The characters for repeating the same thing such as 々 in 人々 also have their own rule. When it happens to be in the first box of a vertical line, you switch it back to the original character, so if 人々 gets split because it's at the end of a vertical line, the first box of the next line is 人 too as if it's 人人 split into two parts. An exception to this rule is when it's a proper noun such as the name of a person. So 佐々木 is always 佐々木, split or not.

Quotation marks such as「」and 『』 may be tricky. If you use them for a certain emphasis (e.g., the you-speak-of or I-think-it's-a-misnomer-but senses I used in the second and forth lines of this post), then you simply use them just like you do in English. But if it's quoting speech of another person, you usually start a new line for the quote. And after the quote, you start a new line leaving all the remaining boxes after the quote as blank space. So, for example,

He said, "I'm tired!" So we decided to take a rest.

becomes a vertical version of

He said,
"I'm tired!"
　So we decided to take a rest.

in squared paper. The quoted line (i.e., "I'm tired!") usually starts from the first top box unlike new paragraphs. The line immediately after the quote usually starts from the second top box with the first being a blank if it's a stand-alone sentence like the example above (See? I put a space before "So we decided..."). But if it's like:

"I'm tired," said magamo.

then you can write

「もう疲れた」
とmagamoは言った。

without a space before と, though you can put a space too. I think the elementary school way forbids the extra space in this latter case. This varies from publisher to publisher, and it's related to more complicated cases you don't probably need to learn. So maybe it's better to stick with the no-space rule if it's "「〜」と言った" and such.

If the quotation is long and takes up multiple vertical lines, the latter half (or thirds and so forth if it's very long) of the quotation can start from either the first box or second box with one block of space. So you can write either

「この前ここであいつ見たかなぁと思ったんだけど
うーん、やっぱ、気のせいかも？」

or

「この前ここであいつ見たかなぁと思ったんだけど
　うーん、やっぱ、気のせいかも？」

in a vertical manner. Again, all characters including symbols like "「" and "？" usually get their own boxes.

Here is one thing you should consider. Your average school teacher would say you should put the Japanese period at the quoted sentence. And they say you can put the closing quotation mark "」" in the same box as "。" or use two blocks to write "。" and "」". This is what elementary school teachers teach us. But in reality, if you open up books (Novels might be good because it's easier to find quotations and usually written vertically), you'll notice that professional works often leave out "。" if it's at the end of a quotation. I'm not sure if which style they want you to follow. But you should pick one of them and be consistent.

Don't take this lightly though because grade schoolers often lose marks when they didn't put "。" if that's against the way their teacher wants them to write in, which doesn't represent the most common contemporary vertical writing style. Anyway, here are examples:

「どんな例あげたらええかな。あー、考えるのめんどいわ」(popular style in real life)

「どんな例あげたらええかな。あー、考えるのめんどいわ。」(textbook style, which used to be more common than the above several decades ago)

Also, Japanese has a seamless quoting (e.g., when you say, "君が好きだと言った," it can be either that you said you like her or that she said she likes you, the latter being an example of seamless quoting), which English doesn't. You can surround a seamless quoting by "「 " and "」" for an effect. In this case, you don't need to do the line breaking. So, you simply write

昨日「君が好きだ」と言ったばかりなのにもうその態度かよ。

in a vertical way. Note that if you do this in broken Japanese, you may look like ignoring the standard line breaking rule for quotation. So use it only when you're 100% sure you sound like a native speaker with good writing skills.

Ok. I'm starting to lose track of what I've explained, so I stop writing this post here. I may have missed some important rules, especially too obvious ones. Sorry if that happens. In any case, I think the best way is to get copies of drafts from good writers and use them as references.

Finally, there is no such thing as a correct usage of square paper. Those rules are all conventions which can differ from field to field and from author to author. As far as I know, the rules explained in this post are almost universal in real life usage such as newspapers, novels, and vertically written magazines.

Sorry to intrude in this topic, since I have nothing more to say than this. This most informative answer of yours, magamo, deserves its own topic and a sticky on top of it!

magamo Wrote:Notice that how I used "……" in the previous example. This is roughly (but not exactly) the same as the English "..." mark as in "*sigh* I think I suck at Japanese..." Unlike in English, you use 6 dots in Japanese.

And unlike in English, you put a「。」 after 「……」

「そうなんですか……。寂しいです……」

magamo Wrote:Also note that the Latin alphabet, Arabic numbers, etc. are usually of half-size, which means you put two letters in one box. So the word "English" requires only 4 boxes: En-gl-is-h.

But when you're writing single letters, you write them as usual, and give them a whole square. 「ＡからＺまで」 Abbreviations (such as "SF", "UFO") are also written this way (one letter per square), I think.

magamo Wrote:In rare occasions, you might find yourself wanting to use non-Japanese symbols such as "？" and "！".

When you write 「！！」 or 「！？」 put both symbols inside a single square.

magamo Wrote:えーっとねー、それはねー、うーんとねぇー、わかんないや。is also correct because these bars are not dashes.

But really long vowels get a dash 「生存戦略ゥ——！」「ダメ——っ！」

iSoron Wrote:And unlike in English, you put a「。」 after 「……」

「そうなんですか……。寂しいです……」

Note really. It's a style choice. Some do and others don't. It's also normal not to when space is limited such as in a short column or newspaper article. In a freer situation such as writing your own essay, it's entirely up to the author. You should be consistent in one complete work though.

iSoron Wrote:

magamo Wrote:Also note that the Latin alphabet, Arabic numbers, etc. are usually of half-size, which means you put two letters in one box. So the word "English" requires only 4 boxes: En-gl-is-h.

But when you're writing single letters, you write them as usual, and give them a whole square. 「ＡからＺまで」 Abbreviations (such as "SF", "UFO") are also written this way (one letter per square), I think.

This is about when to use 全角 and when to use 半角. The former is the full-size characters such as あかさたな阿井宇ABC (I don't know if this forum can understand the Latin alphabet in 全角. If it doesn't, the last three would just look like the normal ABC.). The latter is the half-sized characters such as abcABCｱｲｳｴｵ (Again I don't know if this forum understands the half-sized Japanese characters. If it doesn't, it could look something entirely different. Anyway, the last five characters are supposed to be half-sized katakana.)

A 全角 character takes up the whole box. A 半角 character uses only half of a box, hence a pair of them gets packed into one box. In general, you use 全角 for pretty much every character in vertical writing. Acronyms, especially common ones such as NATO, tend to bleed into vertical Japanese text fairly often, and they're no longer very foreign so it's not that strange if they get 全角'd. Part of a phrase such as ＡからＺまで also tends to get 全角'd. A single letter as a variable in mathematics such as "変数aに3を代入する" usually remains 半角.

It's impossible to list all of the common practices like this. But whatever you write, you should read tons of works of the same kind before you try to author your own. So you should already be familiar with when to use which when you start writing. It's like you should know the most popular pronunciation of "SATA connector" before you write an article about computers. If you don't, you're not qualified.

iSoron Wrote:

magamo Wrote:In rare occasions, you might find yourself wanting to use non-Japanese symbols such as "？" and "！".

When you write 「！！」 or 「！？」 put both symbols inside a single square.

These are very rare symbols which you should generally avoid using in careful writing. If you somehow need to use them in vertical writing with squared paper, probably it's better to represent what you want them to look like in the final publication (if it's a draft for something you want to publish, that is). Entertainment publications for younger kids seem to use them more frequently than others in vertical writing. But they're not common in general.

iSoron Wrote:

magamo Wrote:えーっとねー、それはねー、うーんとねぇー、わかんないや。is also correct because these bars are not dashes.

But really long vowels get a dash 「生存戦略ゥ——！」「ダメ——っ！」

These examples look as if they're taken from manga or light novels. As I said in the previous paragraph, they tend to use nonstandard symbols. Also, usage of symbols (or anything including words for that matter) is often entirely up to the author in a novel and the like for obvious reasons. So if that's what you want to write and that's how you write, go for it. But as is the case with symbols like "‼", it's hardly universal across styles. If anything, they should be avoided unless you really need them.

By the way, the ‼ is used for "double factorial" in Japanese too, though usually it's !!, not ‼ because it's quite rare to use a double factorial in 全角.

magamo Wrote:Google 原稿用紙 and 使い方. You can find tons of websites teaching how to write Japanese properly with "the squared paper."

Note that while Japanese kids do learn the so-called "standard" way to put characters "properly" such as how to handle symbols and little characters like っ, it's not used by writers in real life; it's not standard at all outside of elementary school. In fact, there are many styles when it comes to use of the squared paper. ...

The topic was about the correct usage of the Genkouyoushi paper. Manuscript paper is used beyond elementary school, and standard rules do exist. The lack of strictly adherence to the correct writing method doesn't invalidate this fact. The original question was about 原稿用紙の書き方.

Omoishinji Wrote:

magamo Wrote:Google 原稿用紙 and 使い方. You can find tons of websites teaching how to write Japanese properly with "the squared paper."

Note that while Japanese kids do learn the so-called "standard" way to put characters "properly" such as how to handle symbols and little characters like っ, it's not used by writers in real life; it's not standard at all outside of elementary school. In fact, there are many styles when it comes to use of the squared paper. ...

The topic was about the correct usage of the Genkouyoushi paper. Manuscript paper is used beyond elementary school, and standard rules do exist. The lack of strictly adherence to the correct writing method doesn't invalidate this fact. The original question was about 原稿用紙の書き方.

I don't quite follow you. 原稿 means "manuscript" or "draft" and 用紙 means "paper for the purpose of." As you can tell, 原稿用紙 means paper for manuscripts. The "standard" rule kids learn is based on style guides by the government (specifically then 文部省). And it's used pretty much only for textbooks in school. Each publisher has its own rule actually.

Read my next post in this thread. You can see publishers provide 原稿用紙 for manuscript submission. Also, if you didn't know, 原稿用紙の書き方 doesn't make much sense in Japanese from a grammatical point of view either. Do you mean 原稿用紙の使い方?

[Edit] Since you don't seem to know what you learned as a "standard" rule, here's what it actually is:

The set of rules Japanese kids learn in elementary school is based on quite old writing guides such as 「くぎり符号の使ひ方〔句読法〕（案）」which was devised in 1946 by the Japanese government as a "guide," not something you should adhere to. The actual rules kids learn can be slightly different from school to school because different textbook publishers may mix those obsolete guides a little differently or incorporate modern writing style guides to an extent.

In any case, it is about 65 years old, and actual writing practice outside of school has changed a lot. But elementary school education hasn't changed much, hence the discrepancies between real usage and what you seem to believe is "official" or whatever. If you can't believe me, take several books published in these few decades such as newspapers, novels, and magazines. You will see they aren't consistent in style, but you should realize that there are certain rules which most of them usually follow.

In short, there isn't such a thing as THE correct rule you should adhere to. But there ARE certain conventions which, if you don't follow, make you look ignorant and can make your work harder to read. What I wrote in the long post is some of the most important rules which are nearly universal across those various styles used in real life including the obsolete elementary school style; if you actually read my post, you should know I occasionally explained here and there what you should do if you want to adhere to the elementary school manner.

If you still think you are right, just read, say, books with a margin at the bottom such as novels and see if they do the ぶら下げ thing. Chances are they do if they're published in these few decades and the authors didn't ask not to for aesthetic reasons. Read newspapers and see how they handle 。and 」at the end of a line. Do they do the margin thing the elementary school way? I know they don't because you don't put 。in such a place in the first place unless, for example, you're doing your essay homework in elementary school.

So, if the OP's question were how to get an A in the class, the only correct answer would be, "Ask the lecturer." But since he said he's independently learning how to use squared paper, I explained some important general rules including the elementary school ones, which you seem to believe are THE rules or something.

Splatted, if you've looked and the exam board hasn't made it clear, get in touch with them. You might think they won't have time for you as an independent candidate, but my experience (with AQA and OCR, at least) has been very positive. I think generally the board will be happy to help, especially if the information they've put out has been ambiguous. Give them a call or (probably better for clarity's sake) email them the questions you have.

Thanks for all the help guys this has been really helpful. Especially Magamo, that must have taken ages to write but it answered questions I didn't realise I needed to ask, so thank you for taking the time.

@JNash: That sounds like a good idea. I think I will

Talking about 原稿用紙, can someone pm/link me a good .doc/.pdf to a decent file? I'm not sure which are appropriate for writing Japanese after reading the one or another rule magamo posted so kindly (Thanks! I immediately printed out your precious writing and bookmarked your post :)) I have the bad habit of scribbling down kanji and compounds everywhere on papers, but I want to do it more systematical, that's why I ask for some file I could print a few times in a copy shop and bundle together for my convenience :)

The link kainzero provided has what look like 原稿用紙 PDFs at the bottom of the page.
You could also print off some graph paper from here, or just buy a pad of it, though that's a bit different.

Splatted Wrote:You could also print off some graph paper from here [...]

Very interesting; here's the direct link to make it easier:
Incompetech: Genkoyoushi (Japanese Character) Paper PDF Generator

Many publishers provide squared paper (or 原稿用紙 if you will) in various electronic format for manuscript submission. If you want ones in PDF and Microsoft Word format, here is from 日本文学館:

http://www.nihonbungakukan.co.jp/modules...x.php?id=9

You can find both vertical and horizontal versions for handwriting and computer typing.

[Edit] I just realized that it may not be obvious to learners that the standard 400 boxes paper for vertical writing is wider unlike your average letter size or A4 paper, which is taller. So if you downloaded the PDF version for vertical handwriting, make sure to rotate it when you use it.

magamo Wrote:I just realized that it may not be obvious to learners that the standard 400 boxes paper for vertical writing is wider unlike your average letter size or A4 paper, which is taller. So if you downloaded the PDF version for vertical handwriting, make sure to rotate it when you use it.

Hey, magamo -- two idiomatic terms in English for you. Paper is set up for printing either in portrait format or landscape format.

'400 boxes paper for vertical writing is wider' -- landscape
'letter or A4 paper which is taller' -- portrait

This comes from photography of course.

This is a great thread; I was just looking for this exact information the other day -- I printed off many sheets of 原稿用紙 and then bound them into a notebook using the shell of an old (large format) Moleskine using the instructions at http://www.trumpetvine.com/sketchblog/mo...-reloaded/ . I use the notebook to do my Anki kanji reps; I'm hoping that when I finish it I will see an improvement in my handwriting over the notebook.

Thanks, BohemianCoast. That's a handy pair of words!

Your post reminds me of how our elementary school teacher would make us write a bunch of kanji on squared paper when we were naughty. You make fun of the teacher in class, and you're writing the kanji you learned that day 400 times. You complain, and another 400. Soon kids turn the punishment into the who-is-the-fastest game, and you behave naughty on purpose on the day you learned the kanji of the name of the girl you had a crush on. No wonder Japanese kids are good at kanji.

We got this handout at my university. Maybe someone will find it useful.