Character Introduction 3 – Writing vs. Typing

LESSON NOTES

How to input Chinese Characters?

When you write Chinese characters, you write them stroke by stroke (unless you’re writing 草书 [cǎo shū] cursive style).

When you type Chinese characters, you use Chinese Pinyin Input: type Chinese Pinyin syllables, get a list of all characters sharing this Pinyin sound and select the character you want.

How does writing help us recognize Chinese Characters?

To input Chinese characters cannot be easier, but for you select the correct Chinese characters, you will have to be able to recognize Chinese characters at least.

Memorizing the look of the characters could be easy as long as:

1. you know the stroke and element construction of the characters—this is the understanding part
2. you practice writing each character a few times—because this helps in memorizing them.

Popular Chinese Pinyin Input

A lot of devices have their own default Chinese Pinyin Input already, most of them are easy to use and can satisfy the demand of most Chinese learners.

There are some third-party input methods that work pretty good, if not better. However these Pinyin Input might not come with 100% English settings, so they might not be user-friendly for complete Chinese beginners.

Below are the desktop/laptop Pinyin input we recommend for you to type Chinese characters when you are already familiar with the Chinese system. As a beginner you can start with the default Chinese pinyin input on your device so that it is easier to operate the input settings in your own language.

Baidu Input    Sougou Input    QQ Input

Other Chinese Input

Wubi method, 五笔输入法 (wǔ bǐ shū rù fǎ) is also a popular Chinese Input method. It puts different Chinese character components onto the computer keyboard and once you remember where each component is located, you can type any character by typing its components. It takes more time and practice to pick up than Pinyin Input.