Writing Japanese Katakana. Jim Gleeson

      In both printed and handwritten Japanese, the characters occupy imaginary squares of equal size, with each character centered within its square.

      All of the writing practice in this book involves writing characters within squares, and the squares have centerlines to provide the correct balance and feel for writing Japanese.

      Traditionally, Japanese is written with a brush or fude, and this fact is reflected in many typographic styles today. Although the fude is no longer widely used, some principles of using a fude still apply to writing Japanese with a pencil or ballpoint pen — in particular, the stroke endings.

      The strokes of Japanese characters terminate in one of three ways, as illustrated below.