
Japanese rules for writing your ABCs are surprisingly strict - bemmu
https://soranews24.com/2020/06/08/can-you-write-the-alphabet-properly-according-to-japanese-teachers-probably-not/
======
larkost
I took Japanese in college, and we were taught that this is because
dictionaries are arranged by stroke. For Kanji characters there are tens of
thousands of them, so "alphabetical" order is a meaningless concept, making
stroke count and order the most meaningful ordering concept. But that then
requires stroke order (and direction) something you have to be completely
consistent about.

This is a memory from a couple of decades ago, so I could be wrong.

~~~
SllX
I believe you are referring to the SKIP method, which near as I remember is
really only used by one Dictionary publisher (at least 10 years ago, although
a lot of dictionary apps I've seen include it now) and is a very modern
invention.

The real reason comes down to legibility. Kanji written badly can be hard to
read, and Katakana or Hiragana written improperly can throw you off as well
(め、ぬ、ね、れ、わ、ろ、る、シ、ツ、ソ、ン、ク、タ、ヌ). Japanese teachers, just like teachers anywhere,
try to teach good penmanship not just as a virtue, but because it makes their
own lives easier to stick to the rules and to have their students stick to the
rules. The language itself has also undergone some reforms since the Meiji era
to standardize and regulate it, including the stroke order.

~~~
numpad0
Hiragana letters are actually sorted from あ to ん like A to Z, but Kanji such
as 阿 and 吽 or 本, 間, 新, 一 has no linear sort orders, is probably what GP was
explained.

~~~
SllX
Hmm, could be, but if you're relying on stroke order for lookup, that sounds
like the SKIP method to me. You have to have knowledge of the stroke order,
and be able to figure out the exact stroke count by looking at a Kanji in
order to use SKIP effectively. I'm not overly familiar with other lookup
methods, possibly because I shaped my biases around using SKIP for lookups
back when I studied Japanese.

This is a little off topic, but since I don't often get occasion to bring this
up, let me drop it off here that there's also an alternative sort order which
is an archaic (mostly, there are places that still use it), but cool sorting
order called いろは ("iroha")[1] which is a poem which uses each character of the
syllabary, each _kana_ in other words, exactly once.

Also, if you open TextEdit on a Mac in Rich Text mode and create a list from
the toolbar, there's an option to "Show More" which allows you to use いろは and
other Japanese sort orders as bullet points.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha)

~~~
unscaled
The SKIP method is indeed a modern invention. It was invented by Jack Halpern
and used in his Kanji dictionaries which were published by Kodansha and
Kenkyusha - I guess this is where the 'single publisher' idea is coming from.

These dictionaries are all 'Learner's dictionaries', and I'm not sure if SKIP
was ever used in a dictionary aimed at native speaker - although it is
probably the best method for paper-based Kanji lookup.

The more traditional stroke-count based lookup, OP was referring to is
probably the radical+stroke count lookup, which is of Chinese origin and
considerably older[1]. Using that system, you would first find out the kanji's
radical (部, basically just a "part" in Japanese), find the radical in the
index, count the remaining number of strokes in the kanji and then find the
kanji.

Both the radicals themselves and the kanji listed below each radical heading
in the index are ordered by stroke count, which qualifies this system as
stroke count ordering.

This system is unfortunately much more confusing than SKIP (especially for
learners), since there is a good chunk of kanji where the radical is not
apparent, some radicals have multiple variants - and of course you'd have to
first learn all the 214 standard radicals in the first place.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical)

------
cannam
Not much here about how clear or appealing the results are, aesthetically. In
that respect, I think the rules are quite successful.

Many years ago, I made friends with a Japanese person while we were both
rambling in New Zealand, and we wrote to each other on paper for a while
afterward before switching to email. I liked her handwriting, and I imagined
it had something to do with her personality - clear, perky, rounded, friendly.

I still had this image in mind until, much more recently, I visited the Death
Railway museum at Kanchanaburi in Thailand, and I looked at the exhibits of
records written by the Japanese jailers in the death camps during the second
world war - and they had the same handwriting! The friendly handwriting of my
correspondent was also the friendly handwriting of the commanders sending
prisoners to their deaths.

It's a good script, and I learned something about not judging people by their
handwriting. The goodness of my correspondent was real, but it wasn't manifest
in her writing.

------
gp7
A nice example of Japanese stroke order mattering are two of the katakana, ツ
and シ. The difference is that the former starts at the top left and the
strokes move right, then down and across to the left. The latter starts at the
top left and moves down, then up and across to the right. It can be hard to
tell what one you are looking at in practice if you don't know this.

I think cursive used to serve the same function, which I basically conjecture
from the fact that older people tend to be significantly better at reading
cursive than me.

~~~
toyg
Your oldies are better at reading cursive because cursive used to be read and
written much more than it is today. It was the fastest way to write, and
people had to use it _a lot_.

Typewriters first and computers later removed a massive amount of handwriting.
Schools in some countries reacted by dropping cursive altogether, probably
because they thought the effort to learn it was not worth it anymore.

~~~
taeric
I've taken a dive into the world of shorthand. Another thing near killed by
computers. Surprisingly fun to get into, though. (The ridiculous sexism in
many of the books is cringe inducing...)

~~~
myu701
I learned just the letter-forms (no shortcut / brief forms) from Teeline Fast,
really helped me when taking sermon notes or wanting to write in my journals
with a bit of obfuscation.

------
q3k
This is not strictly a Japanese thing. I've had similarly tough requirements
on my handwriting in a french primary school, for instance. To the point where
my work would be thrown out if I dared to write letters differently than what
was ordered. I have heard similar stores from multiple other European
countries.

~~~
Someone
There used to be rules for the hand you write with, too. Left-handed writing
was forbidden, and didn’t work well, anyways when using a dip pen that wasn’t
specially designed for left-handed use.

I think the Japanese obsession with stroke order has its roots in writing with
brushes and slower-drying ink. If you use them, stroke order will affect what
letters look like more than when using ballpoint pens.

~~~
innocenat
Not really. Even with ball point, while for neat letter stroke order doesn't
matter, for a messier (normal day-to-day) writing, stroke order absolutely
matter. It can become illegible fast if you use wrong stroke order, because
correct stroke order tend to create similar overall shape while the wrong
order don't. Granted, you don't have to be exact with the stroke order, but
general rule still need to be followed -- you can't just write it in reverse
order and expect it to be easily readable.

------
gumby
I watched my son have an A/B test. His school was bilingual (German/English):
English was taught by non-German teachers, in English only (starting in grade
1); some of the teachers couldn't even speak German (how does that work?).

All the subjects except English require the kids to use fountain pens and of
course use the German letterforms. The kids' handwriting was clear as a bell
right from grade 1. In the beginning they had workbooks that also showed the
stroke order.

By contrast, although supposedly the same rules applied in English (foundation
pens and German letterforms), in practice the English teachers didn't care
what writing implement was used and paid no attention to handwriting
whatsoever. As a result these same kids drew often illegible scrawls when
writing English which they could otherwise speak, read, and type just fine.

Fun trivia: The first graders learnt one letter of the alphabet each week; in
English this was "A" the first week, "B" the second etc while in German it was
frequency order (R, S, and E were among the first few IIRC)

~~~
leipert
German here:

You generally start with easy letters like „o,i,a,m,n“. With those you already
can form words like „Mama“ or „Mami“ (mum) / „Oma/Omi“ Grandma. They are easy
to write, especially capital M and N.

Then you quickly learn all the other vowels and more frequent consonants.
Often letters are taught as syllables or in common combinations as well. I
think Q and Y are probably one of the last ones you learn. I actually remember
a dictate from third class where none in class remembered how a capital Y.

I tried to find a good source for the order of letters, but finding a primary
school book for free online is hard. There might be subtle differences between
books or regions. (eg if you live in Quedlinburg learning Q might be more
important than in Berlin). Every state has it’s own school plans and schools
choose their own books. The school book lobby is really strong and they make
so much money off of this stuff.

Source: Mom is a elementary school teacher.

~~~
gumby
> You generally start with easy letters like „o,i,a,m,n“

Thanks (to you or your mum :-) -— it’s been about 20 years since he started
Schule so I forgot the precise detail. Unlike him or his mum I grew up in
Australian English so started ABC but was struck by the different ordering.

In general I found the German school system to be quite good!

------
laurieg
An interesting side effect of Japanese stroke order (at least with Japanese
characters) is that character recognition for dictionary apps etc is based
around stroke order. If you mess up the stroke order badly enough then it
won't recognize the character at all.

~~~
awirth
I've noticed this pattern too.

For example, try to draw the character 口 on the 'draw' functionality on
jisho.com -- the correct stroke order is (cardinal directions for 3 strokes):
1. NW -> SW 2. NW -> NE -> SE 3. SW -> SE. If you try to do it any other way
it will fail.

If this is a problem for you (e.g. learning Japanese and don't know stroke
orders and/or don't care to learn them exactly) -- the Google Translate
handwriting input for Japanese does not have this behavior (or at least as
much) and will effectively recognize your incredibly shittily reproduced
kanji.

~~~
thehappypm
╷

┌

┌┐

口

~~~
philsnow
the second stroke of 口 goes right from your first glyph ╷ to the third glyph
┌┐

said another way, your second glyph ┌ doesn't appear in the "correct stroke
order" because the top+right sides of the 'mouth' are drawn in one stroke.

~~~
kohtatsu

      ╷  Down
      ┌┐  Right, down
      口  Right

------
yutopia
A Japanese tweet/blog aiming to stir up outrage among the “concerned” Japanese
public, being taken up by an English-language website for their latest “weird
Japan” article.

Being Japanese myself I can share countless horror stories about how English
is taught here, but crap article is crap.

~~~
bemmu
Can confirm that "weird Japan" is the usual variety of story on the blog, but
I posted this one after seeing it elsewhere and this article seemed to sum it
up well.

In reality a teacher wouldn't dock you points for writing the alphabet in the
wrong order? If so perhaps the post should be deleted.

~~~
yutopia
Knowing the state of English education here I wouldn’t be entirely surprised
if the story was true, especially seeing how the original blog post was
written by a tutor in (rather rural) Fukui. I’ve never experienced anything
like this myself, but some teachers truly are clueless.

However it’s quite a bit of a stretch to call these “Japanese rules for
writing your ABCs”. The tweet wouldn’t have gotten 15k likes and retweets if
this was a widespread occurrence or the standard way people are taught English
here. It’s shocking and outrageous, that’s what made it viral.

------
Grustaf
Stroke order is the only reason cursive Japanese/Chinese can even exist, your
cursive would look nothing like mine if we used different stroke orders. Never
mind the nightmare of teaching 100m (or a billion Chinese) to write thousands
of pretty complex characters if there wasn’t a canonical way to do it.

Also, it makes sense semantically. Most characters consist of several
“subcharacter” that also exist in their own right, so you definitely want to
write them as units.

It’s a fundamentally flawed comparison.

~~~
hrktb
As others posted, cursive is the same deal in most european countries.

Anecdotally this is why I can’t read most adult cursive writing, as I bailed
very early to “print” like handwriting. I have no notion of how the letters
flow and it just looks like messed up coils to me.

~~~
toast0
A lot of the cursive forms are pretty similar to dragging the pen while
writing in block letters, with exagerated loops and a slant. F's are weird
though.

------
SAI_Peregrinus
If I'm writing something that anyone other than I might need to read I tend to
use single-stroke gothic technical lettering. That also has a strict stroke
order, but it's very different from what the article describes. EG "O" is two
strokes, one starting at the upper-left and curving counter-clockwise towards
the lower right, the second starting at the upper-left and curving clockwise
towards the lower right. Here[1] is a good reference to the capital letters.

[1] [https://designbuildacademy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/En...](https://designbuildacademy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/Engineering-Lesson-3-Lettering-complete-
explanation.pdf)

------
supernova87a
Two random thoughts (and coming from the point of view that I am a fan of some
aspects of Japanese culture):

1) You start to wonder whether such training to follow stroke order, "staying
within the lines", is a reflection or contribution even to the rules-following
society that Japan is?

2) I am sure many have written about it before, but I have never dug into it
-- why is it that when you see English rendered on a Japanese website, it's
always in a Courier-era font that is instantly recognizable? (highly
pixelated, wireframe looking font). Is it lack of interest in development of
English fonts for Japanese audiences? Is there some deep incompatibility in
the page / paragraph rendering "technology"? At the same time, Japanese /
Chinese characters in Japanese websites do have the equivalent of people
designing different fonts (stroke widths, curvatures, styles, etc) -- why is
English special (and badly rendered)?

~~~
pier25
> _You start to wonder whether such training to follow stroke order, "staying
> within the lines", is a reflection or contribution even to the rules-
> following society that Japan is?_

I've always wondered why different cultures have different _relationships_
with rules and organization. I'm from Europe but spent my teenage years in
Northern Africa and have been living in Mexico for over a decade. I think
about this all the time.

My totally unscientific hypothesis is that it's all about the climate and
geographical regions.

For example, northern European countries tend to be a lot more organized than
tropical countries. In Northern Europe one wouldn't survive next winter
without organization, while in tropical countries there is food all year
round.

As for Japan I always thought that this almost obsession with order, details,
and rituals comes from their lack of space for agriculture. Japan has few
plains and lots of mountains so by necessity they had to learn to cultivate in
difficult spaces to survive. This attention to detail is everywhere in their
culture compared to, say, Latin America or Africa.

In Mexico particularly there is almost an aversion to rules and imposed
restrictions which in turn creates all sort of weird behaviors. A Mexican
friend always argues this is in fact a perduring trauma from the Spanish
conquest, but I argue that this doesn't happen in other countries.

------
boomboomsubban
As an American, I definitely remember being taught these rules in elementary
school and then just never having a teacher care beyond maybe one test. Which
seems to be how the Japanese English teacher is also handling things.

------
prvc
I believe similarly strict rules were observed for cursive writing when it was
still being taught.

I wonder whether such interminable busy-work is an emergent feature of
educational institutions arising naturally as a result of how they are
structured.

~~~
ghaff
Before most people typed, having at least reasonable handwriting was arguably
a fairly useful skill. (Arguably, learning shorthand would probably have been
equally useful for many but "clerical skills" were looked down upon in a lot
of curricula.)

That said, handwriting (Palmer script) was consistently my worst grade in
elementary school and it's basically non-existent today.

------
christiansakai
Fun fact: The stroke order for the upper left symbol of Hidari (左) (meaning:
left) and Migi (右) (meaning: right) is different. If you get the stroke order
wrong you won't be accepted on the Kanji Proficiency Test (Kanji Kentei).

~~~
norswap
More info: in 左, you'd draw the horizontal line first, while in 右 the slanted
vertical line goes first.

~~~
vore
That is super weird and looks like it's a Japanese-ism only: Chinese has no
such difference:
[https://strokeorder.com.tw/%E5%8F%B3.html](https://strokeorder.com.tw/%E5%8F%B3.html)

~~~
jhanschoo
Note that post you linked has different orders between the animation and the
static image.

If I'm not wrong, TW stroke order agrees with the JP order. CN standardized
the stroke orders of many gylphs against calligraphic tradition.

The TW stroke order in this case is more aligned with calligraphic tradition:
see
[http://www.sfzd.cn/shufa6/2495714749c131513682e1a3f8e08fa62....](http://www.sfzd.cn/shufa6/2495714749c131513682e1a3f8e08fa62.jpg)
vs.
[http://www.sfzd.cn/shufa6/46625e0c6c9573d8b78056cc8919c64b6....](http://www.sfzd.cn/shufa6/46625e0c6c9573d8b78056cc8919c64b6.jpg)
where the calligraphic forms make the stroke order clear.

------
konart
Yep, same here in Russia:

[https://encrypted-
tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQmxq...](https://encrypted-
tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQmxq7CDylL7JUsDTFrWjjJhggRMpz-
ELlSdb_g4zJmk8K56r0i&usqp=CAU)

[https://ds03.infourok.ru/uploads/ex/07bc/000585fb-26570f7b/h...](https://ds03.infourok.ru/uploads/ex/07bc/000585fb-26570f7b/hello_html_465cb584.jpg)

(wow I completely forgot how to write Ж the right way...)

~~~
anthony_romeo
Quick question: When I dabbled in learning Russian some time ago, my materials
stressed that handwriting in Russia is primarily cursive. Schools in America
have deemphasized/removed cursive writing from their curriculum. Has Russia
seen similar trends in education/usage of cursive writing?

~~~
konart
No, if you write in russian you write in cursive. Some people adapt their
"style" to make it easier for them (for example using "т" instead of its
cursive counterpart) but I can't imagine anyone writing (or leaching how to
write) like this: "мама мыла раму".

This would also have the whole healthcare system destroyed. Can you imaging a
doctor putting down letters you can tell from each other?

~~~
anthony_romeo
Thanks!

------
robocat
Stroke order is very important in English if you will learn cursive/script
(joining your letters).

The New Zealand curriculum in 2012 was[1]:

    
    
      Years 1&2 Learn letter formation.
      Years 3&4 Cursive writing via teaching ligatures – the joins to the letter.
      Years 5&6 Learning to join letters.
      Years 7&8 Joined up writing.
    

Standard printed alphabets in New Zealand classrooms had small arrows and
numbers to show stroke order, although maybe it isn’t taught any more?

In the article they show how to draw a capital O, and option 1 is definitely
correct (from top, counterclockwise), and the Japanese version (option 2) is
simply wrong. Without the groundwork of drawing the letter strokes in the
correct order, you cannot learn cursive easily (or it will just look wrong).

An example is a lower case x, where it was taught as: top left semicircle to
bottom left then top right semicircle to bottom right (with the two half
circles touching in the middle). If the little x is taught to be formed this
way, then one can easily learn to write the script x correctly and legibly.

Edit: I painted a wall in my home with blackboard paint so friends can draw on
it, and yesterday I was writing notes on it, and I immediately dropped into
using cursive (even though I only occasionally write by hand now). I admit it
wasn’t that readable (only just by me!) Disclaimer: I am middle aged and I
went to a more conservative school - I have no idea of how many NZers can
write cursive although most people older than me certainly do in my
experience.

[1] [http://teachingnz.com/2017/07/22/should-schools-still-
teach-...](http://teachingnz.com/2017/07/22/should-schools-still-teach-
handwriting/)

~~~
kd5bjo
>An example is a lower case x, where it was taught as: top left semicircle to
bottom left then top right semicircle to bottom right (with the two half
circles touching in the middle). If the little x is taught to be formed this
way, then one can easily learn to write the script x correctly and legibly.

In the US, I was taught to form the lower-case x as two straight lines in
block letters. When we got to cursive, the correct way was to draw a hump
where the x should be, and come back at the end of the word to add the
crossing stroke, like is done for t’s and i’s.

------
shermanmccoy
Such an ignorant article, with the usual undercurrent of sycophantic
nippohphilia. I'm so tired of sycophants on the internet pointing at some
Japanese cultural 'thing' they have observed, in this case from reading
someone else's blog, and presenting it to the world as though it is some
unique discovery from the treasure trove of wonderful Japanese eccentricities.

This is not exclusive to Japan. Learning to write in also China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand to begin with, stroke order matters. They carry
over the same instruction technique when they teach English.

~~~
ISO-morphism
There's a word for that! "Nihonjinron" [1]

While the medium of internet blogposts and perceived sycophantic motivations
may be more modern, this kind of "Japanese exceptionalism" has been common
enough in writing to warrant its own genre. While nihonjinron does include
works prior to the Meji Restoration,

> The concept became popular after World War II, with books and articles
> aiming to analyze, explain, or explore peculiarities of Japanese culture and
> mentality, usually by comparison with those of Europe and the United States.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron)

------
neves
I changed my calligraphy after I was an adult. I was inspired by this NYT
OpEd:
[https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009...](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/09/04/opinion/20090908_opart.html?em)

What impressed me was that there are more efficient ways to make your strokes.
Some ways make your hand move less. Do You know any study about it?

~~~
BrandonM
I went to public school in the US in the 90s, and I learned to write just like
that NYT piece. Did you learn differently?

~~~
neves
I'm not American :-)

------
otras
Along the lines of correct stroke ordering, I learned from a colleague that
studied a large amount of Japanese that they had used a visual dictionary for
translating Kanji to English that both allowed you to draw the symbols and
required the symbols to be drawn in the correct order. It seems similar to the
base requirement for looking up how to spell a word in the dictionary; you
have to have some idea of how the word is formed before you can find the full
answer.

~~~
wccrawford
For Japanese characters, stroke order definitely affects how easy it is to
draw a correct-looking character, so it makes sense to be picky about it.

But for English, it simply doesn't matter as much. It's not like they use the
same kind of drawing input to look up words in an English dictionary, either.

------
odomojuli
I'm second generation Japanese-American. I read the article. I learned both
languages in USA.

I just realized that I've been writing English my whole life with a stroke
order.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Strictly speaking, everyone has a stroke order. It's just that they may not be
consciously aware of it, because it doesn't matter to them.

~~~
zokier
Crucially not everyone has a _consistent_ stroke order. I find myself writing
letters in different ways depending on my mood etc.

------
delfinom
Eh, depends on your school? In NYC, I went to a public school where they were
pretty strict and repetitive with teaching basic writing down to the stroke
direction...

~~~
sinkasapa
I had penmanship in elementary school. Lot's of boring repetitions filling
class time, cursive as well. We all forgot about it later on like some mild
trauma that we collectively buried. I actually remember feeling surprised when
I didn't have to use cursive in college. I'm not saying that all the emphasis
on nitpicks was ever good and I'm definitely not shedding any tears but there
are definite signs that we're losing knowledge of the handwritten tradition.
See this humorous Language Log post as an example:

[https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3489](https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3489)

------
apricot
Stroke order is very important when writing kanji, for good reason: it helps
memorize the characters and also makes them look well-balanced. Also, trying
to read cursive Japanese or Chinese is a futile endeavor if you don't know the
stroke order. So it's only natural the Japanese would impose a stroke order
for latin letters as well.

I got a 100% on the test by systematically choosing the way most dissimilar to
how I would write each letter.

~~~
fomine3
Stroke order for radicals (部首) is important, but IMO precise stroke order
isn't so important (example: how to write "口").

~~~
apricot
Some characters have more than one stroke order, and some characters are
commonly written in a wrong order. I remember a Japanese TV program asking
people on the street to write 馬 (horse), and making fun of people writing it
in the wrong order. I guess it would be like a reporter asking people to spell
"definitely" or "embarrassment" \-- you're bound to get lots of wrong answers.

But I disagree on 口, it just doesn't look right when you don't use the correct
stroke order. It shouldn't be a perfect square or rectangle any more than the
letter O should be written as a ge○metrically perfect circle or ellipse.

------
jhanschoo
I would note that to the extent that schools enforce a stroke order, these
stroke orders are somewhat arbitrary, and concerns more with legibility,
pedagogy, and, for some, enforcing it for the sake of enforcing it rather than
an actual tradition.

In the first place, even for identical characters, the way different Han-
character writing countries have standardized their stroke order (to the
extent that they have) may differ. Even with this, the stroke order may differ
from the mainstream stroke order of the carefully-written Kaishu calligraphic
style.

And with more cursive calligraphic styles, the writers have more freedom to
change the stroke order, choose alternative strokes, choose even alternative
forms and traditions of the gylph (think straight r vs. r rotunda) for speed
and expression; even, say, mainstream Xingshu (Running-script) regularly
chooses a different stroke order and variant strokes from Kaishu.

One sad result of this is that many writers of Han characters who do not then
pursue calligraphy then believe that there is one correct way to write
characters, and come to perpetuate and foist a baseless fiction upon others,
and in some respects, judge others by it.

------
virtualritz
There is a curious symmetry in that the average Westerner is just as ignorant
about calligraphy as the average Japanese is ignorant about typography.

In Japan this is reflected everywhere in choice and typesetting of Western
fonts. Products, websites, newspapers, business cards.

It is almost a monoculture in choice of fonts and completely devoid of any
microtypography or typesetting rules unless helped by stuff built into
software.

The enforcememt of rules that essentially lock a student into a narrow and
arbitrary ‘standard’ character set for their handwriting reflect the lack of
understanding of the important role typography plays in Western communication
and how your style of written letters is an expression of personality.

This is regrettable as handwriting of Western type is probably the closest
‘intersection’ with the art of calligraphy that has deep roots in Japanese
culture.

As someone who studied typography and loves to do calligraphy doodles all the
time and who helped digitize quite a few handwritings into fonts I’m saddened
by this.

But having lived & worked in Japan, certainly not surprised.

------
kube-system
How do you teach children to form characters without being this specific? I
remember being taught in a similar way here in the US.

Here's one example:

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/71/9b/b7719b586e646f77c743...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/71/9b/b7719b586e646f77c743dfd8e953c210.jpg)

~~~
TulliusCicero
I think when you're initially teaching how to write characters, yeah there's a
stroke order, but people mostly just care about the writing being
clear/legible/neat, not specific strokes being in order.

~~~
kube-system
I agree, but most of the examples in the article aren't the same same strokes
in different orders, but different strokes altogether.

------
ddevault
The article briefly mentions the reason for this: Kanji. English has 26
letters which are all fairly distinct from each other even when written by a
chicken on LSD.

Japanese has on the order of ~2,000 characters you need to know just to
graduate high school, plus thousands more to read newspapers and advanced
literature, and more still for names, places, and so on. Memorizing the stroke
order isn't as important as some instructors make it out to be, but it can
matter when trying to decipher hand-written Japanese and serves as an
additional clue as to which maybe 10 ambiguous possiblities the writer was
going for in a particular character.

Extending it to English seems kind of silly to us, but if the students are
already taught about stroke order, and use it as a tool for memorization in
their native language, it makes some sense to apply the concept to English.

~~~
Grustaf
Sorry to disagree with you, but I’m not sure it’s even possible to learn
Japanese or Chinese characters without adhering to a strict stroke order. Not
necessarily the one they use (although after 2000+ years of teaching you might
suspect it’s pretty optimal) but you can’t teach your hand to memorise the
movement if there’s no particular order. And since there are so many common
elements between characters, you can’t really choose stroke orders for each of
them individually either.

~~~
ddevault
I'm fluent in Japanese and I stand by what I said: "Memorizing the stroke
order isn't as important as some instructors make it out to be, but it can
matter [in some cases]."

Also keep in mind that even native Japanese speakers struggle with Kanji, and
more so with every passing year. Some of my Japanese friends with college
educations struggle to even _read_ some jouyou kanji, let alone write. With
the aid of technology, modern Japanese fluency de-emphasizes the need for
stroke order substantially.

~~~
snapetom
I learned Chinese, for all intents and purposes, as an ABC living in the west.
I was taught the traditional way with a brush and calligraphy. In this method,
I would agree stroke order and direction is very important. With a physical
brush, the initial plot creates a wider line than when the stroke ends.

Today, though, we use pencils and ballpoint pens. That initial thickness isn't
reproduced. Why dose direction matter at that point? Most of the time you
can't tell which direction I started my stroke.

So while I think the parent response raises a good point that stroke order and
direction may have been important in the development of the culture, I agree
with you that it's less important these days.

~~~
jhanschoo
I agree with your broad point that stroke order need not be dogmatic to good
writing, since if you look at Chinese calligraphy, it's also clear that stroke
order is not set in stone.

Nevertheless, I think it would interest you that you can achieve very
expressive line variation with even pencil and ballpoint; the trick is to
write on a stack of paper so you can vary the area of contact between tip and
paper: e.g. see
[https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21114247/](https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21114247/)

------
ver_ture
They're surprisingly silly. English developed completely separately from
Japanese/Asia, so this teacher is pulling line-directions and rules out of her
ass. There are no such conventions for the alphabet. Her poor students and
their hand cramps, out there writing in courier.

~~~
kps
The Latin alphabet does have historical developmental stroke directions, not
by rules but by what's natural and possible using the historical Euro writing
tool — a broad-cut reed or quill pen. In this sense the Japanese stroke order
for Latin letters is wrong; you can't push a reed pen to write an ‘O’ that
way.

~~~
stock_toaster
Yeah, the "O" stood out to me as objectively wrong as well.

------
galkk
omg, that gives me memories about technical drawing course at my alma mater
(National Technical University of Ukraine), where we were required to draw
everything by hand, including fonts:
[http://docs.cntd.ru/picture/get?id=P0057&doc_id=1200003503&s...](http://docs.cntd.ru/picture/get?id=P0057&doc_id=1200003503&size=small),
[http://docs.cntd.ru/document/1200003503](http://docs.cntd.ru/document/1200003503),
and were graded for the quality of it.

------
ginko
I remember I was taught a quite rigid way to write the alphabet when I went to
elementary school in Austria and the quality of my writing being part of the
grade. (And don't get me started on cursive) Thankfully that was mostly over
sometime around middle school (although I was still required to write in
cursive).

Side note: The A's in the first example both look wrong to me since you're
supposed to write the first two lines in one go without raising the pen.
Having a discontinuity in the top corner is IMO a worse stylistic error than
the placement of the middle line.

------
werdnapk
A lot of people notice my "incorrect" writing style if they watch me (even for
a moment). I start my O's from the bottom and go clockwise for example, among
other differences for many other letters. I was definitely taught how I should
be doing it, but my brain just wanted to do it a different way. I got some bad
marks on some writing tests, but once that part of school was over, I was left
alone for the most part.

------
timwaagh
I definitely learned a 'one true way' to write alphabetic letters in primary
school. In the Netherlands. We had to write every letter in one stroke in one
specific way. Then we learned to write whole words in one stroke. I was pretty
terrible at it and was glad to be allowed to use 'block letters'. I don't know
whether that was universal across schools here or whether they still do.

~~~
ummonk
Wait is this for cursive or print characters?

------
taeric
I recall similar rules learning to letter old school "drafting" documents.
Pointedly, I remember getting spot checked on how many strokes and in what
order a B was written.

Granted, it serves even more purpose in Japanese. But I've always felt the
fact was that writing is art, and great evidence that are can be taught in
much more mechanical ways than most of us realize.

------
JoeAltmaier
Makes sense, in a culture where stroke order is paramount, that when writing
other languages they would still consider it important.

Heck, in Engineering drafting class we learned to letter in a very particular
way. It took 4 strokes to letter a lower-case 'o' on a schematic.

------
tln
> English teacher Hitomi Igarashi shared what she has learned to be the
> “correct Japanese way to write the alphabet” on her blog back in 2018, and
> it might surprise you.

Wish that blog was linked! (or I could find it)

While I'm wishing, a "Japanese way" handwritten font would be cool.

~~~
clogva1
[https://ameblo.jp/hitomi-
nakahashi/entry-12376123961.html](https://ameblo.jp/hitomi-
nakahashi/entry-12376123961.html) You'll have to click the translate button at
the bottom. It covers more letters than the article, but not all.

------
stevula
I've recently started practicing calligraphy and, for each script, there is a
prescribed stroke order (called a "ductus").

------
joyj2nd
LOL. I remember how it threw me off guard when I was asked by young Chinese
students about stroke order for the Latin alphabet. It really puzzled me and I
had to google to confirm that THERE IS NO STROKE ORDER for the Latin alpahbet.

Yet, in Chinese (and Japanese I assume) there is. It is actually very very
important. You actually won't be able to look up a character if you don't know
with how many strokes to write it. It seems to be of no meaning for character
recognition software, like Pleco.

------
nix23
As a lefty, with all the respect, everything that's written there is
completely wrong, in fact mirror wrong

------
lisper
People still build wagon wheels too:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMgTlht-
PsNniRIuaax4m8Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMgTlht-PsNniRIuaax4m8Q)

Once upon a time it was a genuinely useful skill. Nowadays not so much.

------
pjc50
Western handwriting used to be highly standardised; the style known as
"copperplate" was taught in schools. To a certain extent joined-up writing
forces a stroke order on you - the pen enters from the left, forms a
continuous figure, and exits at the right to match up with the next character.
Then you come back and cross the "t"s and dot the "i"s.

It is significantly harder to do it in this style if you're left-handed.

Other character sets and styles may be of interest: the classic "blackletter
Gothic" (Fraktur, until banned by the Nazis) used for German. Cyrillic
handwriting is also quite different from the normal standalone characters.

------
crimsonalucard1
This stuff all comes from China originally. I'm Chinese so I know.

It's because Chinese characters use to be written with brushes and with
brushes the stroke order of the lines is very important for legibility and
beauty. See the pictures in the link, you'll understand:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+calligraphy&rlz=1C5C...](https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+calligraphy&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS853US861&sxsrf=ALeKk01o4JfJypS26y5fXiwNiWbv7c7hUQ:1591677103390&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvzuCi8_PpAhWTsp4KHc8cAyEQ_AUoAXoECBgQAw&biw=840&bih=906)

Just imagine what those characters will look like if you did strokes out of
order...

This stroke order carried over to pen and pencil and also to japan after they
adopted Chinese characters as Kanji and invented their own unique scripts
called hiragana and katakana.

Even with a pencil, stroke order is still very important to Chinese
characters, it's kind of like an accent in your writing. People can sense
something is off with your writing if you wrote strokes out of order. It's
still legible and can even be neat but people can sense something off with
stroke order.

Japanese people are just taking stroke order and applying it to English.

------
hart_russell
Teaching children unnecessary rote memorization over creativity... Gotta start
them early

~~~
eej71
It's too bad that memorization - as a tool - is so readily dismissed. I think
it is immensely valuable and enables one to master complex material and
establish insights that would not be readily available through other means.

I think its a false alternative to see it as memorization vs. creativity. I'd
make the case that memorization provides a useful foundation for creativity.
It enables one to command a large set of facts to then integrate them into new
insights.

~~~
Grustaf
Definitely. The most creative artists, musicians, acrobats etc are not the
ones that skipped learning the basics. Only when you mastered the basics very
very thoroughly can you start being creative and innovative.

~~~
watwut
But, art fundamentals are not learned through rote repetition. There is a lot
of practice, but it is supposed to be mindfull instead of rote and also is
coupled with a lot of explanations of how things work and a lot of creative
work. The usual drawing advice is complete opposite of what you suggest.

Playing instrument in classical school is learned through repetition, but this
schooling is not producing composers nor people able to create new music nor
improvise. It makes people able to perform increasingly difficult technical
pieces someone else made. That is completely different goal and schooling.

Likewise, acrobats are not choreographs which is something completely
different. Acrobacy does not lead to that.

~~~
Grustaf
Do you have any examples of brilliant innovative musicians that did not master
the basics very thoroughly?

I don’t believe the commonly repeated idea that rote learning and repetition
would somehow inhibit innovation. I’m quite sure it’s the opposite. Take
Rodney Mullen, by far the most innovative skater ever, he practically created
new school skateboarding. He’s a machine, completely mastered old school and
is extremely consistent.

------
microcolonel
Japan's weird anal-retentive method of primary and secondary education is
hostile to language learning; it's bad enough here in Canada, where the
typical anglo school will just as likely turn students away from the French
language† as help them learn it, but Japan (among others) is on another level.

We know, empirically, that this is not the way that people acquire language;
but somehow it is the core of almost every public education body's language
curriculum.

† Do you know anyone who acquired French fluency by completing conjugation
tables two hours a week for a decade?

~~~
Grustaf
No it’s not, it makes perfect sense for Chinese based scripts. And it works,
look at their literacy rate.

~~~
microcolonel
Stroke order makes sense for 漢字, and to some extent for 仮名, but rigid
calligraphy of this sort is not a necessity with English, it is a pure luxury,
_especially_ in this case, when it's just printing. That print lowercase _a_
is not self-evidently “correct” in any sense, there is no history or reason
behind printing an _a_ that way, and you can make an argument that it causes
unnecessary confusion with _d_ to do so.

Also, precise stroke order isn't really that important for 漢字 either. Which of
these has correct stroke order?
[https://qui.suis.je/drop/20200608_0001.webp](https://qui.suis.je/drop/20200608_0001.webp)

~~~
Grustaf
I’m not sure what you mean. Clearly the current forms of the lowercase letters
are correct, what do you mean? Do you simply mean that they _could have_
looked differently? Sure.

I can’t open the link, but yes, stroke order makes a big practical difference
for learning, and of course for cursive.

