Katakana :S

[conor1986]

Mina-san, Hello!

I'm currently going through Katakana, but I'm having terrible trouble.

「シ」 and 「ツ」

These are giving my stick. Does anyone have a technique for remembering these two Characters? Any advice will be rewarded with a hug.

[Drabant]

Ever written the gojūon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gojuon

If you haven't, you should learn it, because it is used in dictionaries. If you already know the order of the characters, it's just a matter of writing it out that way.

If you do, you will notice that シ　is written to the upper right of ツ. Notice how the final line is drawn away from that central point between the characters. (I hope you are paying attention to stroke order and direction). Also notice how the two shorter lines usually seem to point more at the end of that final line. Now that you know the final lines are drawn away from that central point, and you also know that the s-row is to the right of the t-row, it shouldn't be that hard to remember which is which.

Now where's my hug?

[QuackingShoe]

All of the strokes in シ are written left to right. All the strokes in ツ are written top to bottom. That may not seem like much, but you get used to it.

[conor1986]

Drabant and quackingshoe! ありがとうございます！

どうぞ、HUG and HUG

Thanks for the tips and advice!

[untmdsprt]

All of the strokes in シ are written left to right. All the strokes in ツ are written top to bottom. That may not seem like much, but you get used to it.

I was thinking it was the other way until I wrote them out by hand.

[zakojanai]

My professor in college had a good visual demonstration of how to differentiate the two. It's hard to describe this without a picture, but basically she pointed out that シfollows the lines and direction of　し, while ツ follows the lines and direction of つ. I'm not sure this helps anyone out there, but her visual representation of it was how I was able to finally tell the difference.