Abstract
After several decades of Chu manuscript discoveries, I believe that we now have sufficient material to study Chu people’s writing habits, or what I will call here Chu writers’ habits, with respect to their specific use of Chinese characters. However, it still appears difficult to isolate any clear tendency in this regard within the corpus of Guodian or Shanghai Museum texts. Considering that these documents are probably the result of a succession of copies made by various people, possibly including non-Chu people, this paper suggests that a reflection on Chu writers’ habits should first and foremost be based on documents entirely produced by Chu people, such as the Baoshan, Geling or Wangshan texts.