Improving handwriting.

[chryuop]

I read books in Japanese (which of course are written in vertical) and I don't see the problem. Even though I am European and thus not used to vertical writing, I have to say that reading Japanese vertical is not all hard.
Japanese works with ideograms, thus 1 symbol 1 word (I know that is simplified alot) and that makes so you don't have to read 12 or 13 letters to realize what word you are reading. You read a kanji and you know what it is, then you read the related kana that complete the meaning of the phrase.

I don't speak arabic, but I would assume reading it would be harder since you have spelled word to read in a different order.

[Ojamajoz]

I'm sorry if this has suddenly changed the topic, but to the OP, I find that when I just try to write more careful, my handwriting gets better. Try just writing slower and try to write it as neatly as possible. That's what I do at least. It may not be efficient, but I think in the long run it may be beneficial to your handwriting if you just try to write the characters neater when you are writing.

For example, when I write really fast, my handwriting SUCKS. I'm pretty much the only person who can understand it, but when I take my time to write it neater, It gets much better. People have even commented my handwriting!

So I guess just try to write neater...sorry if this isn't much help.

[TBox]

Oh, well, if we're going to be on topic:
OP, buy one of these: Amazon.com: CENTIMETER GRID DRY ERASE BOARDS: Toys & Games
Make sure all your kanji take up a 2x2 square. Use the crosshairs to make sure your characters have the right proportions. Then just practice, practice, practice.

For English penmanship, they tell you you should start by writing bigger than you need, and try to use the elbow and shoulder rather than the wrist and fingers. Writing small in English is supposed to come after you've mastered writing large. People who write with only their wrist and fingers generally end up with cramps after long periods of writing, and if you ask them to go to the blackboard, they just don't know how to write large letters. I don't know why it would be different for Kanji.

I don't know how the natives are going to react to this one, but when I saw this I didn't stop laughing for a long time:

Originally Posted by Nyororin

Whether you are able to read it or not is not the point.

I agree with your point 100%. It made me laugh because, as soon as I figured out it was vertical English, I immediately started at the top right. It supports your point, as the only vertical reading I do is Japanese. I actually forced my way through the whole thing, right to left (which took just as long as you would expect), then stared at it for a painful 30 seconds before realizing why it didn't make sense. And then I just could not read it left to right. I had to read it right to left again, and then reorder it in my head.

Also, since it might interest you, the jumbled word trick starts to fail when you break up the contour of a word. They've done eye motion studies that show that ascenders and descenders (bdfhijklt and gjpqy) are key to reading quickly. Break up a word's ascender/descender pattern and suddenly it's not so phenomenal.

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

Aha! A little googling around reveals there's a property in CSS3 (the new standard currently under development for document appearance on the web) that enables 縦書き.

「わしはお前の年齢だったときにネットは横書きしかな かった」？

Also, I wish English had words as short as 縦 and 横.