First, the shape and formation of words is completely different, so the calligraphy has a very different appearance. In China and Japan, there are very few shapes representing single letters or sounds. Instead, single complex characters represent whole words. Each word is a kind of small picture made of lines. By contrast, Western calligraphy is about writing words made up of single letters. What this means is that an Eastern calligrapher is always writing a whole word as one shape, whereas a Western calligrapher is writing a collection of letters which make up a word.