き and さ calligrahpy

Hello there, I'm currently in the process of self-learning Japanese, and as you can see I'm still a beginner (even more when it comes to writing). Anyway, I've come across a tad annoyance with the さ and the き. For one, the exercise book I have, they don't look exactly like that (the bottom stroke is not connected to the body of the symbol).

My questions are :

Is it only this way, because somehow they couldn't make a separated stroke on the computer?

Which way is actually recommended to use when writing on paper?

The separated ones are far more common, rather, the strokes are almost always separated in hand-writing.

It depends. Stand alone characters will most likely have bottom strokes separated, then again in vertical calligraphy it may differ (see links below). さ is more likely to be written with the last stroke connected, whereas き not necessarily. It is so because of the nature of the cursive script of the characters 左 and 幾, of which cursive script characters さ and き were based on.

If you want to see both hand-written, have a look at my blog:

平仮名 (ひらがな, hiragana): さ (i.e. "sa")

平仮名 (ひらがな, hiragana): き (i.e. "ki")

Having said that, you need to remember that calligraphy in Far Eastern sense of the word is something totally different than calligraphy term known in the western side of the world. You most liely refer here to 習字 and not 書道, in which case both will be written with the last stroke separated. In 書道 there may be hundreds of variations of one character, and the subject itself is far more complex 習字.

Thanks for the clarification !