If you're talking about as auxiliary verbs, then it seems to be a stylistic choice from what I can gather. Although a teacher I know told me not to use kanji, which certainly seems to be more common. Personally, I prefer to think of them as part of the おくりがな. They're not being used in their original meaning, so kanji doesn't make much sense to me, especially when people write ～て置く.

My current teacher always writes it with kanji. It's just a stylistic choice.

くだ＝２字
下＝１字

http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~sanai/column/13kuda.html

　「下さい」と「ください」、あなたはこの言葉を正しく使い分けていますか？「ください」は、相手にある物、物事を請い求めることなど動詞の場合は漢字を用いて「下さい」と書き、補助動詞の場合は、「・・・・て(で)ください」と平仮名で書きます。

You'll still see a lot of people using 下さい instead of ください, so it doesn't seem like that big an issue (or at least one many people care about).

Over on Jgram someone says that Japanese manuals of style recommend kanji with Nounを下さい, but kana with Verb -te formをください。

That's when it's transitioning from concrete original kanji version to idiomatic/abstract version, right? Like 置く/ておく as place/do in advance... I've never gotten the impression this holds true for 下さい, though.

What I was originally getting at is I get the feeling sometimes, when talking of stylistic choice, that the above is more of a visual guideline (thus not much relevance with 下さい since I think the kanji was already rather metaphorical for it, no?), and thus if someone wanted to orthographically emphasize, even while keeping the 'auxiliary' sense, the original meaning, they would use て-kanji form... ? That's a big leap from my experience to theorizing about aesthetic choices, though, without having read anything about it. ;p

Last edited by ruiner (2010 March 16, 8:22 pm)

yudantaiteki wrote:

I don't think it's that deliberate.  More likely it's influenced by what takes more strokes, what comes up automatically when you hit space bar in the Windows IME, and such.

Hmmph. I was really hoping to trap you with that one. Next time... I mean, just kidding. ;/

Speaking of which, 下 is a really fun kanji to write. I don't know why, but I'm very fond of it.

atylmo wrote:

ruiner wrote:

Speaking of which, 下 is a really fun kanji to write. I don't know why, but I'm very fond of it.

Sweet, I'm not the only one. I love it when it shows up in texts too. It really is that aesthetically pleasing. I have no idea why either.

..I'm not weird.

Oh yeah, I just love the sexy way the さ flows after the 下, followed by the pair of い strokes... oh sorry, too much? ;p

Last edited by ruiner (2010 March 16, 9:23 pm)

So we're agreed, then? They're both common, and only a stylistic difference? That remains my impression.

And so  what is the stylistic difference?  The rule of thumb I've learned was
more kanji = more polite
I could see here that since the kanji means below and is associated with lowering one's self it could really enforce that connotation and therefore making the request more polite--not that 99% of people would think about this upon reading it.

For me the difference would mostly be what I think looks cooler and is easier to write and read due to movement of strokes and the use of one kanji vs. two kana, respectively. For other words I will play with the visual-semantic differences, and I appreciate in a kind of ironic way the sense of inbuilt humility with 下さい, but personally for that particular word there's not enough orthographic weight to make me use it for that latter reason as opposed to the aforementioned lightly aesthetic and practical reasons.

Last edited by ruiner (2010 March 17, 2:09 am)

I don't think anyone here meant 'stylistic difference' as referring to some kind of codified aesthetic usage of 'てください' or that there's some kind of rigid rule about how it should be written with hiragana, lol, like there's some kind of civil war at work via 下さい/ください...

BTW, yudantaiteki, you've cited those two authors/republications and the orthographic edits before (edits which sound a bit weird to me, to be honest, I try to imagine parallels but all I can think of are mass market paperback versions of very vintage classics marketed for kids--no idea whether those even exist, though ;p) are you referring to two specific things you've read, or are you saying that you've checked out quite a few of them, a representative sampling? I guess I'm saying I'm wondering whether you're expanding your personal experience too far, or if this is a major trend in publishing that reflects the idiosyncrasies of old/modern kanji/kana? I feel if it's the latter, I'm going to have to make a mental note to condescend heavily to those editors/publishers.

When I try to compare the Japanese writing reforms etc. as they might be reflected in literature, at best I can parallel with forms of other countries' writing that feature archaic language from canonized authors equivalent or near in stature to those two Japanese authors, but even though modern people have trouble with things that are no longer used, those things aren't removed by editors to reflect modern changes (except for specific purposes, like maybe a colloquial bible), they're annotated in print and explained in classes, etc.

"Tristram Shandy was much more digressive than necessary, so we shortened the sentences and made them more straightforward."

"Shakespeare used some very odd grammar and made up words, we rearranged the sentences and took those out."

"We replaced 'thou' with 'you'."

"Austen is well, Austen, so we added zombies."

If you and others more familiar with such things tell me it's a common occurrence that is indicative of a different, more orthographic aspect of modern Japanese publishing, I will take your word for it... I will just consider those publishers my linguistic enemies!! ;p

Last edited by ruiner (2010 March 17, 1:26 pm)