When I see the radical being used in 洗 and 凉 in some books or even sougou. They break it up into a broken radical that looks nothing like it.
Is it one of those things that are related only to computers and I should just ignore the difference?
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As others have commented, it is just another font. I would say just ignore it and as a learner, stick to the standard one for now, which is like three short strokes on the left. It would make more sense if we look into the origin of water character in Chinese: 水 (shui3). The pictographic form for 水 (shui3) looks like a river flow, which gradually evolved into the three strokes as the radical form for water character in Chinese: 水 (shui3).
answered Jul 1 '14 at 15:55
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There are many glyphs for Chinese characters, for example,
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You can just ignore the difference between print fonts and handwriting font. It's in the same way that we don't write the letter 'g' (by hand) like the way we print it.
氵. It is called 提(Ti), see this wiki page. In calligraphy, one can 顿笔 (press down the pen) first and then "flick it up and rightwards" -- that's how your second picture is written -- and it is counted only one stroke. However you can simply just write "3 little stripes", that's also OK. – Stan Jul 1 '14 at 15:17