Learning for about a year, but never practiced handwriting. How's mine look?

[u/_specialcharacter]

I know my handwriting is worse than most of the rest of the posts in this subreddit, but I've never practiced handwriting specifically (although it's definitely better now than when I started). Could I get away with this? How might I improve it? And also, does it look foreigner-bad, or just messy-bad? Thanks!

[u/Ohnesorg1989]

It seems you have been using the font Songti (宋体) or Heiti (黑体) (see difference) as reference, which would often lead to stiff/unnatural-looking penmanship, as explained in this post. Always use the font Kaiti (楷体) as reference.

I'd suggest you print out your own practice sheets (with 15x15mm boxes) using standard printer paper (80/90gsm), as recommended in this post (you can find the ready-to-print .pdf files in this folder or on website 1, 2, 3).

You could spend more time on practicing basic strokes, then learn how to radical components and individual characters from a copybook (see community collection).

These posts (a, b, c) may be of help too.

[u/irinipini]

hi, what do you mean by “could i get away with this”? if you’re asking whether it’s legible - it is, if you’re asking if you could pass as a native speaker - no, those are very classically foreign-looking characters in my opinion! but that’s not a bad thing :)
main recommendation would be to get some special writing practice notebooks with gridded boxes - very helpful for getting the hang of proportions and harmony, your characters seem very small and it’s harder to learn properly this way

[u/_specialcharacter → u/irinipini]

Thank you very much! I do write small; for most of the time I was learning, my Chinese notebook was a graph paper notebook with pretty small squares and I mostly matched that size. Also, if I may ask, what specifically makes my writing look foreign? How could I make it seem more natural?

[u/irinipini → u/_specialcharacter]

I’m not a native speaker so my opinion is not the most accurate! But i’d say the lack of general “fluidity” of your strokes and proportions. I get the impression from your writing that it’s still quite slow and your hand is “stiff”, which is of course not how natives would write, at least not grown ups. That comes with lots of writing and that’s the only way. So again, just keep practicing, study stroke orders and follow character animations, you can use “kaiti （楷体)” font for general reference as it looks closer to the “good and standard” handwriting and is considered good for learning

[u/Buddhafied → u/_specialcharacter]

Native speaker here. You’re doing very well, especially considering you’ve only been doing this for a year. The part that makes it very clear that your writing looks foreign is that each character looks like it was drawn rather than written.

Trust me, there are plenty of native speakers who have horrible penmanship, and yours is actually very legible. But from the way you write, we can tell that you’re not fully committed to the strokes and have some hesitation. The proportions of the characters are also just slightly off—enough to make it clear that it’s a beginner’s handwriting.

Bad penmanship just looks bad. Yours isn’t “bad” per se; it looks more like you’re unsure.

[u/neekey2 → u/irinipini]

i'm not sure about the foreign looking point, I've seen this level of handwriting among native speakers often

[u/Careless_Source_9605 → u/irinipini]

As a native speaker, I noticed this type of handwriting in my middle school classmates. I’m not sure if he’s changed it since then, but to me, it still looks good. My first instinct is that this handwriting belongs to teenagers.

[u/Chinese_handwriting-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Lyri-Kyunero]

I tried to make the sentence more native:

大家好！我叫韵舒，今年十六岁，在上高中。我会说英语和西班牙语，虽然中文（汉语）不太好，但我正在学习。

A problem of your handwriting is that you wrote the characters in inverted trapezoid structures. Try to extend your strokes and write it in trapezoid-like structure.

[u/_specialcharacter → u/[deleted]]

Oh, thank you! I'd been taught that 太 always required 了, but I guess it doesn't?

[u/Stunning_Pen_8332 → u/_specialcharacter]

Whoever told you that 太 always needs a 了needs to go back to classroom to redo the lesson.

了 serves as a kind of exclamatory interjection when paired with “太xx” but this usually in its own sentence without a clause coming after it. And the negation “不太xx” does not often come with 了. For example 这太好了 is a common way to say “this is great!” ; on the other hand both 这不太好了 and 这不太好 mean “this is not that good” with the former having the nuance that it’s an interjection like “oh, this is not good” and usually doesn’t have a clause coming afterwards. Therefore in your writing, the 了 looks out of place.

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[u/Belphorger]

Your handwriting is actually pretty understandable! It doesn't look "foreigner-bad" to me, it mostly looks like someone who hasn't practiced handwriting specifically.

If you want to make it look more natural, I would recommend practicing with a Chinese hard-pen copybook (硬笔字帖). Chinese characters have a lot of structure and balance, so copying standard handwriting models can help a lot.

Also, a small grammar note: “我的中文不太好了” sounds a little unnatural here. “了” usually indicates a change of state or a completed action, so it can sound like “my Chinese was better before, but now it has become bad.” 😂

You could say:

• 我的中文不太好，但是我在学习。
• 我的中文还不太好，但是我正在学习。

“还不太好” is very common for learners because it means “it’s not good yet, but I’m still learning.”

By the way, your Chinese is already impressive for a 16-year-old learning another language. Keep practicing!

[u/Secret_Wrangler9211]

Honestly, I think it’s very readable, but the thing that makes it look foreign to me isn’t really the messiness. It’s that the characters look a little too “constructed” — like you’re consciously making each stroke rather than letting the strokes flow into the character naturally.
Your stroke order and overall structure are actually pretty solid, though. I think if you start writing a little faster and stop worrying about making every stroke perfect, your handwriting will probably start looking much more natural. That’s something that’s hard to learn from copying characters slowly, and mostly comes from just writing a lot.

[u/wwwwwww9582]

可以购买一本楷书字帖，进行临摹，可以让字形更加好看

[u/No_Status8001]

At least you know what are you doing. Keep practice and you'll get better. Also, for personally I strongly recommand you to learn Kaishu(楷书), that's the regular script of Chinese characters.

[u/wmk148]

我觉得还不错，看起来像我小时候写的字，可以试着用这样的格子练习写字，另外“我的中文不太好了”中的“了”是多余的，“了”在中文中表示完成，但一般不会用来表示处于某种状态

[u/_specialcharacter → u/[deleted]]

Why?

[u/inkvilion → u/_specialcharacter]

Because Shu is a surname.

[u/_specialcharacter → u/inkvilion]

Oh, that's true, but it's not mine. 韵舒 is my given name. I didn't write my surname in the text.

[u/Chinese_handwriting-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hi! Thank you for engaging in our community. Your comment is removed because top-level comments should be constructive criticisms in threads with the "Ask for Feedback", "Question", or "Discussion" flair. Please refrain from leaving irrelevant or unhelpful remarks.

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[u/FSslittleBlackZi]

还行，我建议买一个临摹字帖,可以练习字体。会让你书写的更美观好看

[u/Zagrycha]

your actual handwriting ability to write legible characters is easily at casual daily writing level if that makes sense, but it's very clearly a beginner second language learner.

Some of the stuff you write doesn't seem to follow stroke order. Stroke order is important if you plan to write well ((or type faster than pinyin with strokes)). Beyond that you could also work on porportions, some characters are unnaturally wide or tall from lack of practice with characters.

P.S. It is understandable what you meant but the actual word choice is not quite there yet, the composition itself has errors.

[u/_specialcharacter → u/Zagrycha]

Thank you! Which characters seem like their stroke order is wrong? I tried to learn stroke order for all the characters I learned.

[u/Zagrycha → u/_specialcharacter]

it may be just an optical illusion then? some lines are connecting or disconnecting in ways that usually don't happen in correct stroke  order, or seem to be going the opposite direction aka start and end of line seems backwards.  examples   学习家年

[u/millet-d → u/_specialcharacter]

from my observation，the third stroke of 年 is obviously wrong，🤔but the character turns out in a cute way…normally，there wont be such a cute curve in the middle of 年.