🔖 Kanji alive: A free study tool for reading and writing kanji

Bookmarked Kanji Alive (kanjialive.com)
Welcome to Kanji alive, a web application (http://app.kanjialive.com) designed to help Japanese language students of all levels learn to read and write kanji. Kanji alive is a resource for learning kanji, dedicated to helping you open the door to the fascinating characters that form the written Japanese language. All of the content in the application was created and reviewed with painstaking attention to detail by experienced Japanese instructors in order to help you best study, practice and retain kanji.

👓 Ruby character | Wikipedia

Read Ruby character (Wikipedia)
Ruby characters (ルビ rubi) are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of Chinese characters when writing languages with logographic characters such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean to show the pronunciation. Typically called just ruby or rubi, such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader.

👓 Jōyō kanji | Wikipedia

Read Jōyō kanji (Wikipedia)
The jōyō kanji (常用漢字, literally "regular-use Chinese characters") is the guide to kanji characters and their readings, announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the tōyō kanji, which was the initial list of secondary school-level kanji standardized after World War II. The list is not a comprehensive list of all characters and readings in regular use; rather, it is intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, as well as a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents. Due to the requirement that official government documents make use of only jōyō kanji and their readings, several rare characters are also included by dint of being a part of the Constitution of Japan, which was being written at the same time the original 1850-character tōyō kanji list was compiled. The 2,136 kanji in the jōyō kanji consist of: 1,006 kanji taught in primary school (the kyōiku kanji) 1,130 additional kanji taught in secondary school Foreign learners of Japanese also often focus their kanji studies on the jōyō kanji list.
 

👓 Stroke order | Wikipedia

Read Stroke order (Wikipedia)
Stroke order (simplified Chinese: 笔顺; traditional Chinese: 筆順; pinyin: bǐshùn; Yale: bāt seuhn; Japanese: 筆順 hitsujun or 書き順 kaki-jun; Korean: 필순 筆順 pilsun or 획순 劃順 hoeksun; Vietnamese: bút thuận 筆順) refers to the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and in Vietnamese. They are known as Hanzi in (Mandarin) Chinese, kanji in Japanese, Hanja in Korean, and Hán tự in Vietnamese. Stroke order is also attested in other logographic scripts, e.g. cuneiform.
The section on general guidelines is particularly useful.

👓 Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts | Wikipedia

Read Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts (Wikipedia)
Horizontal writing is known in Chinese as hengpai (simplified Chinese: 横排; traditional Chinese: 橫排; pinyin: héngpái; literally: "horizontal alignment"), in Japanese as yokogaki (横書き, "horizontal writing", also yokogumi, 横組み), and in Korean as garosseugi (가로쓰기) or hoengseo (횡서; 橫書). Vertical writing is known respectively as zongpai (simplified Chinese: 纵排; traditional Chinese: 縱排; pinyin: zōngpái; literally: "vertical alignment"), tategaki (縦書き, "vertical writing", also tategumi, 縦組み), or serosseugi (세로쓰기) or jongseo (종서; 縱書).
yokogaki and tategaki

👓 Furigana | Wikipedia

Read Furigana (Wikipedia)
Furigana (振り仮名) is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller kana, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji (ideographic character) or other character to indicate its pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known as yomigana (読み仮名) or rubi (ルビ) in Japanese. In modern Japanese, it is mostly used to gloss rare kanji, to clarify rare, nonstandard or ambiguous kanji readings, or in children's or learners' materials. Before the post-World War II script reforms, it was more widespread.[1] Furigana is most often written in hiragana, though katakana, alphabet letters or other kanji can also be used in certain special cases. In vertical text, tategaki, the furigana is placed to the right of the line of text; in horizontal text, yokogaki, it is placed above the line of text.
So many great and interesting uses for this than one might have thought. I particularly like the pdeudo-parenthetical way this is sometimes used. I kind of wish that Western languages had versions of this.

👓 Genkō yōshi | Wikipedia

Read Genkō yōshi (Wikipedia)
Genkō yōshi (原稿用紙, "manuscript paper") is a type of Japanese paper used for writing. It is printed with squares, typically 200 or 400 per sheet, each square designed to accommodate a single Japanese character or punctuation mark. Genkō yōshi may be used with any type of writing instrument (pencil, pen or ink brush), and with or without a shitajiki (protective "under-sheet").
Looking up initially so I can buy some proper paper for practicing Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

It’s also often spelled as genkoyoushi in Romaji.

How to Write in Japanese – a guest post from jlptbootcamp | The Memrise Blog

Read How to Write in Japanese – a guest post from jlptbootcamp (The Memrise Blog)
If you are learning Japanese on Memrise, you have probably come across one of our most active and long standing contributors, jlptbootcamp. Other than adding and editing a good proportion of the wo…
Continue reading How to Write in Japanese – a guest post from jlptbootcamp | The Memrise Blog