Chinese characters are beautiful and fascinating, but learning to write them by hand is time-consuming. If you want to learn to write Chinese characters by hand with the least possible time investment, what’s the best approach?
I remember what it was like to write my first Chinese characters. It felt like writing runes with magical powers. The characters were exotic, closer to art than language.
I still like Chinese characters today, almost twenty years later. Time hasn’t eroded the sense of wonder completely.
Still, acquiring and maintaining the ability to write many thousands of characters by hand takes a lot of time, which could perhaps have been better invested elsewhere.
So, if you’re like me and want to be able to write by hand but want to spend as little time as possible achieving it, what approach should you use?
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A minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand
If you love writing Chinese characters by hand and find the activity worthwhile in and of itself, this article is not for you. Instead, this is for those of you who value handwriting, but not to the point where you’re willing to sacrifice other skills and abilities.
My minimum-effort approach works for both acquiring and maintaining the ability to write thousands of characters by hand, but my goal here is not to delve into how characters work or how to learn them in the first place. This is a general strategy to win the long game, not tactics to conquer individual characters.
- A minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand
- Speaking, typing and writing Chinese characters by hand
- The goal: legible characters, not beautiful penmanship
- Chinese handwriting: one strategy, four components
- Voilà: a minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand
- I’ve used this method for years, and it works
- What’s your approach to Chinese characters like?
For an overview of how the Chinese writing system works, see: The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell.
The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell
For a comprehensive discussion of how to learn Chinese characters, see: My best advice on how to learn Chinese characters.
Speaking, typing and writing Chinese characters by hand
Before I go into any details about the strategy itself, there are a few words to be said about the goal.
My goal is to be able to write most things by hand that I can already type on a computer.
That means that vocabulary, grammar and so on aren’t part of what I’m talking about here. This is about the difference between being able to read, type and perhaps say something, and being able to write it down on a piece of paper by hand.
The good news is that if you don’t see a good reason to write by hand, you don’t have to!
I still recommend that you learn to write some characters to strengthen your understanding of how the writing system works, but there is no strong practical need to learn to write thousands of characters by hand.
Remember, there’s always an opportunity cost. The question is not whether writing by hand is useful, but whether learning it is more important than improving in other areas.
The goal: legible characters, not beautiful penmanship
Since we’re considering a minimum-effort approach here, we need to find the smartest way possible to learn the bare minimum. This means there are two things this approach will not teach you.
- You won’t learn to write beautifully. That clearly doesn’t fit into a minimum-effort approach.
- You won’t learn to write quickly. This is also a minimum-effort consideration. You will merely be able to write, even if it takes a little time.
Again, if you’re not okay with these compromises, that’s completely fine, but then this approach is not for you. If you want to improve your penmanship, check How to improve your Chinese handwriting instead.
Chinese handwriting: one strategy, four components
The four components in my strategy are reading, typing, spaced repetition software and communicative handwriting.
Below, I’ll discuss them one by one and explain how they help me reach the goal described above.
Component 1: Reading
Reading is a fundamental ability in any language. Any endeavour to conquer the Chinese written language should include lots of reading, preferably extensive reading.
Reading also exposes you to Chinese characters, and while this is not enough to enable you to write them by hand, it provides a solid foundation.
If you’ve seen a cumulative total of a million characters, you will know much more about what they look like than if you’ve seen ten thousand. And I don’t mean unique characters here.
Of course, reading also has many benefits unrelated to handwriting, but I think most people are aware of that. If not, please read this article: What to read to improve your Chinese and why.
Component 2: Typing
While handwriting might not be strictly necessary in a modern digital world, typing definitely is.
Typing makes sure that you know everything you need to communicate in written Chinese, except for the handwriting bit.
This means that if you can type something, you generally only need character knowledge to be able to write it by hand as well.
If you use phonetic input (such as Pinyin or Zhuyin), you also make sure that you know how to pronounce what you’re typing, which increases the chance that phonetic components will remind you of how to write the characters as well.
I don’t think anyone will question the usefulness of typing Chinese characters, so let’s move on to the next component.
Learning to pronounce Mandarin with Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA: Part 1
Component 3: Spaced repetition software
Spaced repetition software is crucial for any minimum-effort approach because it’s by far the most efficient way to maintain large amounts of knowledge.
These programs help you schedule each review, putting it off for as long as possible to save time and strengthen memory, while not delaying it so long that you forget.
It’s possible to maintain a large vocabulary this way with less effort than most other methods. I prefer Skritter because it’s geared towards handwriting, but you can also use other apps, such as Anki or Pleco.
Component 4: Communicative handwriting
Communicative writing refers to writing Chinese characters with the primary goal of conveying meaning.
Most handwriting practice is not communicative, such as translating sentences, doing exercises in a workbook or using spaced repetition software.
For writing to be communicative, the writing needs to be meaning-focused rather than form-focused. For more about communicative learning in general, see Real communication: What it is, why you want it and how to get it.
Real communication: What it is, why you want it and how to get it
It can be with other people, such as leaving a note for a friend written in Chinese or chatting with someone online using handwriting input on your phone.
It could also be with yourself, such as writing shopping lists or taking notes in Chinese.
The point of communicative writing is that it’s realistic and ensures you constantly practise the high-frequency words you need to be able to write well.
If you neglect this step, you will likely find that you forget even common characters when forced to write by hand, simply because you never write them, and spaced repetition software isn’t very good at spotting weaknesses in knowledge you’re supposed to know really well.
Voilà: a minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand
By combining these four elements, it’s possible to reach the goal of being able to write by hand most things I can already type on a computer.
This strategy is the result of a lot of thought about how to learn what I need without spending too much time. I haven’t found a way of removing any of these components, which is why I call it a minimum-effort approach.
I’ve used this method for years, and it works
I have used this approach for a few years, and it has served me well. I can write Chinese when required to, and I seldom forget characters or words.
I don’t spend much time focusing only on writing characters. It’s all integrated into other activities that are either communicative or meaningful in other ways.
Even if my typed Chinese is superior to my handwriting, that’s mostly because of differences between word processing and handwriting in general, such as speed, ease of editing and so on.
This is at least partly applicable to any language, so I would find it harder to write this article by hand than to type it in a text editor. Thus, I still prefer typing Chinese, but I’m not really afraid of writing by hand.
The only drawback is that when required to write something lengthy, the muscles in my hand aren’t really up to the task and get tired easily, but I can live with that.
What’s your approach to Chinese characters like?
What strategy do you use to learn to write by hand?
Are you like me in that you want to learn it, but not more than necessary?
Or do you genuinely enjoy writing characters by hand?
Share your approach in the comments below!
Editor’s note: This article, originally published in 2015, was rewritten and republished in November 2025.
8 comments
I’ve been experimenting with a new way to practice writing with my phone:
I often see signs or texts I can’t quite read. So I take a picture to decipher them later. I create a note on Evernote, insert the photo, and write what I see.
Pleco is the easy way to write as it’s forgiving with stroke order and time, but my phone’s Chinese writing input tool is more challenging. On Android I use Google Pinyin, which (as its name doesn’t say) allows drawing input. It’s faster and puts more pressure on me, since I have to write fast and more like a native writer.
Later I look up the words on Pleco or input the text into Google Translation or whatever, but I’m finding it’s good practice to write what I see in this way. Futzing with OCR often doesn’t work well for me anyway. Copying bits of text also lets me practice writing in context, unlike SRS systems characters or words are practiced in isolation.
As a simple example, here are two signs in a coffee shop I wanted to make sure I understood this morning:
http://www.evernote.com/l/AIwU1kYk7kxP1KMqjB23Cd8yco2YpFLMlmE/
[Translation: Put away the tray and don’t hog the space — OK I knew that already :D]
Thanks for sharing! I think real-world based learning is excellent and should be used whenever possible. Just downloading a list of language commonly found on signs just isn’t the same as doing what you describe here. By the way, I actually found a list with street sign Chinese: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dporter/sampler/allsigns.html
Going through some of these hacking Chinese articles, I really can’t bring myself to agree with any of them. For this one pertaining to writing, let’s look at these 2 statements:
1. I don’t care about writing beautifully.
2. I don’t need to be able to write quickly. I merely want to be able to write, even if it takes a little time.
Alright. Firstly, is there a such thing as a minimum approach to writing? You either learn it or you don’t. The first stipulation suffices. But the second doesn’t. If you are having to bust your brain just to write down a sentence, it will be used as proof that you are not proficient in the language you are writing. You may “prove” that you can write, but it will be like that illiterate person who just learned the alphabet, and has to jog his brain just to write down a simple collection of words.
If you wan’t a minimal approach to writing, then don’t even bother to learn it. That’s the only realistic minimal approach that exists. Otherwise it is a full out effort. Don’t hoodwink learners of this language. Speed is definitely important. You aren’t going to do anything useful with writing if you are writing at a snails speed. You’ll have forgotten everything you were writing by the time you finish the first sentence.
It should come as no surprise that I don’t agree, but let’s see if I can explain why! First, writing Chinese by hand is not a binary skill as you imply. There’s a whole range of possible states from “barely being able to communicate basic things in writing” to “Chinese native speaker who just finished high school”. As a teacher, I’m happy if I can recall 95% of the 5000 most common characters or so, even if it takes some time to recall. After finishing my master’s program, no-one has required me to write a lot. I still could, but it would be slow. I think this is acceptable and it’s not about hoodwinking anyone, this is how I study myself. If I aspired to write as quickly as someone who just finished high school, I would need to spend several hours per day on just handwriting and would still fall short. This is why this is a minimum approach.
I also think that learning to write let’s say 500-1000 characters by hand is good for character understanding and vocabulary retention, even if reading is your ultimate goal rather than handwriting. So I (almost) never recommend students to skip handwriting altogether. In general, there are many different ways of learning and maintaining the ability to write by hand in Chinese and this article presents my own way of reaching my goals while spending as little time as possible. It might not be the right for you, of course, especially if you don’t share the same goals as I do!