39871
The two characters I'm talking about here is the katakana "ka" (カ) and the
kanji 力 as in [入力]{にゅうりょく}.

Just by looking at the two characters in digital text form, they seem to be
written in the same way, except that the katakana version seems smaller. Does
this mean that when I am writing Japanese I should also make it smaller? (Note
that by smaller I don't mean this small: ゅ)

Also, in some fonts, I have seen the first stroke of the katakana version
written without the tick at the end. It just draws a horizontal line then a
vertical line like this:

```

      | 
    ------
      |  |
      /  |
     /   |
    
```

instead of this:

```

      | 
    ------
      |  |
      /  |
     /  \|
    
```

Can I consider the first way shown above as a "sans serif" version? In
handwritten Japanese, can I write that as well?
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2016-10-10T21:08:11.593
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question
orthography handwriting
Is there any difference between writing the katakana カ and the kanji 力?
They look almost 100% identical, but they don't have the same meaning. There
is no way that they could be used in the same context. For example, katakana
is always used for transcription of words from foreign languages and the
Chinese character is always used with another Chinese character to form a word
such as 入力.

They can only be differentiated based on context.
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2016-10-10T17:03:25.643
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answer
カ (katakana) and 力 (kanji) appear essentially identical. The existence of the
"hook" at the bottom right of the character would not help you distinguish the
two, no matter whether they are typewritten or handwritten.

Then why katakana カ looks a bit smaller? That is because making
hiragana/katakana _generally_ look a bit smaller than kanji is a common
practice in Japanese handwriting, (artistic) typography, etc. For example, see
[these posters](http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2146016101789398601) which make
heavy use of typography, or [these beautifully handwritten
letters](http://www.hj.sanno.ac.jp/ps/page/8419). Can you see how the
beautiful balance is like between kana and kanji?

In many computer fonts for day-to-day needs, this difference is not very
prominent, and カ (katakana) and 力 (kanji) may look exactly the same. But in
some fonts, you may find that katakana/hiragana are _generally_ rendered
smaller than kanji. The same thing can be said for other similar kana/kanij
pairs, like ロ/口, エ/工.

In handwritten Japanese, not everyone is an excellent calligrapher, and it's
not really practical to care for the character size too much. Telling apart カ
(kana) and 力 (kanji) is basically impossible. Until you become an expert, you
can write these characters exactly in the same way.
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2016-10-10T21:08:11.593
39871
2016-10-10T21:08:11.593
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answer