There is an appealing purity to a plain Anki deck: no plugins, no fragile add-ons, just cards and the scheduler. If you want to learn traditional characters specifically for writing, you can absolutely build such a deck. But for writing recall, plain Anki has one stubborn catch worth understanding before you commit.

What plain Anki does well

A no-plugins deck is robust and portable. It holds your traditional characters, schedules review with spaced repetition (now powered by the open FSRS), and will keep working without depending on add-ons that break across updates, the maintenance lesson from Inkstone. For owning your data and avoiding plugin fragility, plain Anki is a sensible choice, related to open-source spaced repetition for writing Hanzi.

So far, so good. The scheduler is fine; the data is yours.

The catch: it tests recognition

Here is the limitation. Anki’s default loop is: see a prompt, decide whether you knew it, reveal the answer, grade yourself. That is a recognition loop. Nothing in plain Anki makes you produce the character. So unless you change your behaviour, you will study traditional characters by recognising them, and grade yourself “good” while your writing stays at zero, the recognition-versus-recall gap from the case for a dedicated Hanzi writing app. We cover the broader version in Anki grid-paper setups.

For traditional characters this matters even more, because they are more complex to write, so the gap between recognising and producing them is wider.

Making plain Anki work for writing

It can be done, but it requires discipline you supply:

  • Put the prompt on the front, the character on the back. Show meaning or pinyin; hide the character.
  • Write it by hand from memory before revealing. Every card, every time. This is the whole game, see blind drawing.
  • Grade honestly on your written attempt, not on whether you would have recognised it.
  • Keep correct stroke order, see Hanzi stroke order practice.

The method works only as well as your discipline holds. The moment you start grading on recognition, plain Anki quietly stops training writing.

The trade-off

Plain Anki gives you flexibility, portability, and no plugins, but relies entirely on your self-enforcement to train writing. A purpose-built writing tool removes that reliance by enforcing production, the character is hidden and you must write it before checking, so you cannot accidentally drift into recognition. You lose Anki’s configurability and gain a loop that reliably builds writing recall.

Where Hanzi Write Practice fits

Hanzi Write Practice enforces the production that plain Anki leaves to your willpower. The character is hidden, you write it from memory on a grid, then check stroke order, pinyin, and meaning, with spaced repetition. The honest trade-offs: it is not as flexible as Anki, and it focuses on simplified today with traditional planned, so for traditional writing specifically, factor that in.

If you love Anki’s purity, the no-plugins route is viable, just hold the discipline to write every card. If you would rather not rely on willpower, a tool that enforces writing is the simpler path.

Join early access and let the tool enforce writing for you.