AAAHHH!!!

I have to agree with you, my handwriting would be crap if I didn't write them out like that. Plus I get practice writing top-down. As you can see, I've had to assign "Lanes" for my kanji. It's so funny...

Yo, I was doing top, bot, left, right. I'll try your way now!

I've slowly over time changed the way I wrote. When I started off with only RTK, it was graph paper I made with a spreadsheet program. I think I did about 30 pages, with 500 characters per page.

I moved onto a notebook when I began sentences doing left to right top to bottom. Front and back of the sheets. No spaces were left. Yeah, those sheets look a mess now.

Later I began doing seperate lines for the sentences. Then I turned the page on the side and began vertical writing.  Now for neatness, I do RTK reviews on the back of the sheets and sentence reviews on the front of the sheet.

Like everything else, the style you choose will evolve in time.

For me it depends on what I'm doing. Normally if I'm practicing my handwriting I write vertically. But if I'm practicing verb conjugations, for some reason I prefer to do it horizontally. I'm not sure why... I guess I didn't think about it the first time I did it, and now I keep doing it that way.

You should see it now.

Haha, I had like 7 or 8 sheets like Alyks in the past. When I went on a month+ hiatus (had a LOT of crap going on, and I just found it hard to get back into it), I lost them. I think there is one under my bed, but I have no idea where the others went.

Anyways, I have two practice things. I have a notebook, with the character written neatly in the margin in the left, with the keyword and the English story written out by hand on the right. It was an excellent way to memorize it (The story, that is), but I had to stop when my hand started cramping up. 50/day wasn't good for it.

My review sheets are a lot like Alyks. You can see in the corner that I start out small and neat, and try and make it as efficient space-wise as possible. Then things get out of hand...

Last edited by Triddy (2008 July 11, 9:59 pm)

Around 800 or so I gave up on writing the kanji out. I now trace them with my finger, head, or eyes (or sometimes combinations thereof); saves time and paper

Of course, it also doesn't help my writing be particularly neat. I figure once I'm no longer getting upwards of two hundred expirations most days I'll go back to writing them, just so I don't end up with my kanji being as illegible as my English writing.

~J

Even when I had large amounts to review, I still wrote mine out. I now realize I have some muscle memory built up with kanji.

Plus if it is written down, you are less likely to fudge whether you got it wrong or not.

To be fair, I have done it using only my finger and palm.

I usually write mine out, though depending on the circumstances I have done it on my palm. I agree with Nukemarine that over time you develop muscle memory, so sometimes your fingers seem to tell you "there's another primitive here, it's not done yet" or "I know the flower primitive goes first on top because I've written it that way 10 times in the past year." Over time your hand just automatically writes it out correctly with little thought.

I usually write the kanji on the palm of my hand when I'm revising, but I count the strokes as I draw them. That helps me realize whether I've made a mistake, like forgetting a drop or something.

I do top to bottom left to right since I use an oblique (aka italic) fountain pen and the ink takes a few seconds to dry. Writing any other way leaves me with ink on my hand.

I just use the backs of paper I no longer need (裏紙) etc since I want to shave the whales.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2008 October 01, 12:23 am)