After playing with Skritter on and off for the past year I just noticed that I’m not consistent with my stroke order and as a result my muscle memory is now flawed. How long does it take to unlearn bad habits? The problem I’m having is that at first my goal was simple: to learn as many Chinese characters as possible. But I’ve come to the conclusion that establishing good habits early on should still be a priority.

When practising hit the settings button on the top right and change stroke order to strict. I think you'll find you'll quickly learn how to write them properly. You'll have no choice!

I had to relearn 女 when I found out I was doing it wrong. It took a couple of weeks of being strict on myself but it wasn't a huge deal.

Now we have more options. Raw squigs mode plus max strictness is excellent for teaching discipline.

James

"I think you'll find you'll quickly learn how to write them properly. You'll have no choice!"

That's not what I meant. Now that I am aware of my mistake I can consciously make changes to my old habit and don't need to rely on the settings option.

The problem I had -- and still have -- is that I actually thought I was doing everything correctly (since I had the green box and check box). I bet I am making a lot of other mistakes and don't even know I am making them.

Apart from the nonstandard shortcut for 女, all of the stroke orders that Skritter lets you do without giving a warning are standard somewhere. The multiple standards allowed by Skritter are a problem if you're trying to learn only one particular standard, but that hasn't seemed to be a very big issue for anyone so far... or perhaps I misunderstand?

"without giving a warning"

I was bypassing the warning -- or Skritter thought I was doing it correctly -- without even realizing it. I was doing vertical before horizontal, outside before the inside, etc. Obviously it wasn't that bad as I was still getting the character correct but I could tell.

It wasn't until I was reading about the standard stroke order and how you can tell how educated someone is by the way they write that I realized that I wrote like a slow child.

For an analogy, I lift a lot and there is usually a certain way to do a lift with proper form. It's not required, and you can lift however you want, but most elite athletes lift the same way (at least when they start) to maximize efficiency.

icecream said:

> but most elite athletes lift the same way (at least when they start) to maximize efficiency.

This is interesting note by the way. I was not paying big attention to stroke order till now, but this made me think... very interesting