Hi everyone, lately I’ve been going through Stein’s gate in Japanese and having a blast learning all the kanji that I see, but I noticed something peculiar about one in particular, 備. As it appears in this font, it is written the same as it is by hand, but I have seen several cases where the little side mark on the top left corner of 用 is actually replaced with a full “cliff” radical encircling it.
I’m curious if anyone knows of why this is the case, and if any other kanji similarly are written in two (arguably quite) different ways. Did the original version include the cliff radical but get abbreviated to just a small corner line as short-hand?
4 comments
Some kanji are written different in handwriting, but that particular one you’re talking about is actually a difference between Chinese and Japanese styles. [You can compare here.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%82%99) If you don’t have a Japanese font installed, I recommend that you do so, since many CJK characters differ between Chinese and Japanese.
The hand-written version of 備 matches the [Traditional Chinese form](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%82%99) of the character, while Japanese typefaces normally use the Japanese form with the “cliff.”
On computers, thanks to [Han unification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification), you may sometimes get a Chinese font where a Japanese one was intended, or vice-versa.
The ones I’ve seen so far: 人 and 入, they’re both handwritten differently
心 looks quite different handwritten as well.