Questions tagged [writing]

Questions related to written Chinese. Note: there are separate tags for 'handwriting' and 'characters'.

165 questions
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How to improve my Chinese handwriting?

When someone has grasped the basic concepts of writing Chinese, there comes a point where handwriting starts to look plain or mechanical. From what I have seen, the lines look very straight and like someone who has just copied directly from a…
going
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How to (hand) write Chinese characters faster

Are there any resources / how-to sources about how to write Chinese characters faster than normal while still being readable? It took me forever to take notes while in class.
Meandering
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Are authors of Chinese fantasy novels able to create names for fictional creatures/races?

Like Dr. Seuss' Wickershams and Wockets; Final Fantasy's Bandersnatches and Moogles; or Dr. Who's Daleks and Chronovores, English works of fiction (most commonly fantasy) often contain fictitious creatures and races with creative names that aren't…
Question Marks
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Are [ɚ] and [ər] interchangeable for (儿化) er-hua?

I've got different resources doing different things for er-hua, e.g.: 包儿 resource material #1 [pər] resource material #2 [pɚ] is [ɚ] and [ər] interchangeable for (儿化) er-hua? I would hazard to guess that [ər] is just a lazy [ɚ].
Mou某
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How To *Write* The Northeastern ‘ber lou’?

A long time ago a Northeastern friend of mine showed me how to write ‘ber lou’ using 汉字. ‘ber lou’ being the northeastern equivalent of 额头. I have since forgotten how ‘ber lou’ was indeed written. How is the Chinese Northeastern word for 额头: ‘ber…
Mou某
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How much less of chinese written language does GB2312 cover versus GB18030 and UTF8?

My daily work often involves handling databases from around the world, as I support customers. Frequently encoded in CSV / TXT. For legacy reasons, encoding often needs to be done into GB2312 (Windows codepage 936). And at times, certain characters…
MyICQ
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How to read this talisman (符)?

I came across this talisman (符) the other day: I can recognize some characters in there, but mostly I'm just stumped by the entire thing. How are talisman supposed to be read? How can I read this one?
Mou某
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Understanding different Chinese writing styles

Aside from the standard printing style of Chinese (what is referred to in this wikipedia article as regular script), what are the main styles that are in modern use? When looking at different styles of handwriting it appears to someone like myself…
going
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How to type Chinese vertically from the right to the left?

Is there an easy way in Word or Text or other software to type Chinese vertically from the right to the left, such as the following?
Zuriel
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Ideas for Chinese leetspeak/computerized speech?

Leetspeak is the idea of replacing letters with characters that resemble them. For instance replacing "o"s with "0"s: n00b. This sort of text can also seem like computerized speech, i.e.: if an AI was talking. There are some ideas for doing this in…
Mou某
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Is there such a thing as dyslexia in Chinese?

A friend asked if there is such a disorder as dyslexia in Chinese and if so, how does it manifest itself? dyslexia: a medical condition affecting the brain that makes it difficult for someone to read and spell words correctly Dyslexic children and…
Pedroski
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Why are titles sometimes placed in the middle of a newspaper article?

In a newspaper I'm reading (环球时报), there are multiple articles in which the title appears somewhere in the middle of the text. One example is: (click for unannotated version; other examples: 美人员现身台雷达站威胁有多大 (newspaper; online) and 全球确诊超四千万,欧美疫情恶劣…
Becky 李蓓
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Closing a letter from two people

When writing a letter to family members, such as on a holiday card, how do you close the letter when it's being written from two people (such as from a husband and wife)? If one of our names is a one-character name, is it appropriate to write the…
Claw
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Spacing Guidelines for Modern Chinese Writing

Given that Chinese characters don't need to have any spacing between them (from here), in that they don't need whitespace between words, or even between paragraphs or chapters, then you could just have basically a grid of Chinese characters…
Lance
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Multiple characters for the same sound in Chinese

In chinese mandarin, why does Chinese language has multiple characters for the same sound? What is the reason?
Tomsofty33
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