Left handed people and Calligraphy

[roddy]

There's a small dot on the right end of the character which makes the ending point for most characters.

And for those of you who can't see it - don't worry, it's not in all fonts . . .

[Hofmann]

Explanation:

The "dot" is a serif. If your browser displays the Chinese on this site using a Ming style typeface (like MingLiU or Simsun) a triangle-like thing can be seen at the end of horizontal strokes. This comes from the need to reinforce horizontal strokes in wood block printing.

[xianhua]

I nearly started a new thread on writing hanzi with the left hand, but then I found this one. Well, it's nice to hear there are other left-handers coping perfectly well in the world of Chinese out there. I've never found any problems in using my left hand to write characters, and my hand-writing is judged ok by natives (well apart from my characters all looking like printed characters, but I don't see how I can ever do anything else) . The only problem I've ever encountered is when sitting around around a Lazy Susan and the Chinese person next to you keeps getting accidental nudges from the annoying left-hander.

On the subject of characters, I've been flicking through some old posts over the last few days. It struck me how many advanced Chinese users on here can only write a proportion of the characters they know and use (through a computer). I guess at some point, the learner must decide how best to utilise their time. I'm currently moving back to the writing-by-hand camp though as so many new ones just aren't sticking well enough.

[renzhe]

It really is a matter of priorities. And today, in the age of computers, writing by hand is less important than before.

I started by focussing on reading only, but I'd like to eventually be able to write the most common 2,000 characters by hand. I think that will be enough for all things that I do without a computer (writing a note, etc.)

[Hofmann]

So today I had a few characters printed on a piece of paper. I turned it over and I could sort of see them backwards on the other side. I'm a righty, so I thought I'd trace them with my left hand, as that should be sort of what it feels like to write with one's right hand if one is left handed. After that, I just wrote freely a bit faster. Here are the results:

http://i46.tinypic.com/334sxp1.jpg

...and if I was really left handed, and was writing with my right hand, this is how it would look:

http://i46.tinypic.com/123xitt.jpg

Of course, I don't write with my left hand very much, so I think it could be better if I did it more.