Chinese Writing

Chinese Writing posts cover the script from oracle bone inscriptions through bronze seal script, clerical, regular and cursive forms. Articles look at how characters are built from radicals and phonetic components, the difference between simplified and traditional forms, why the same character can have very different readings in Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese, and how a literate adult typically knows three to four thousand characters. There are also notes on the order of strokes, the use of grass script in calligraphy, and why typing on a phone changed handwriting practice in a single decade.