Where to Write Small っ, ゃ, ゅ and ょ: Vertical and Horizontal Writing

Japan’s official rules for modern kana spelling, issued by the Cabinet in 1986, say that the や, ゆ and よ used in contracted sounds (yōon) are “written small where possible”, and that the つ used for a doubled consonant (sokuon) is too (Agency for Cultural Affairs, Gendai Kanazukai, in Japanese).

Japanese children learn to write long vowels, contracted sounds and the small っ in their first two years of school, according to the national curriculum guidelines (in Japanese). Learners of Japanese meet them at about the same point: right after the basic hiragana. Most people quickly understand that these characters are written small. Where exactly they go in the square is less obvious. This post is about the position and size of small kana, for learners of Japanese and for people who teach children.

Top right in vertical writing, bottom left in horizontal

A small っ, ゃ, ゅ or ょ takes up a square of its own. Within that square, it sits in the top right corner in vertical writing, and in the bottom left corner in horizontal writing. This is how it is generally taught for school compositions and for genkō yōshi, the squared manuscript paper used in Japanese schools.

I find it helps to think of the small character as leaning on the one before it. In きゃ, you write two characters, き and ゃ, but say one sound. The small character belongs to the character before it.

• In vertical writing, the previous character is above. So the small one moves up.
• In horizontal writing, the previous character is to the left. So the small one moves left, and sits on the bottom line of the text.

This doesn’t explain why it moves right in vertical writing. For that part, I think it is quickest simply to remember “vertical: top right”.

How small

As a guide, I would divide the square into four with a cross and fit the small character into one of the four quarters: the top right quarter in vertical writing, the bottom left quarter in horizontal writing. Practice paper with a cross in each square makes these quarters visible, which helps children and adults alike.

What matters most is that a small character can be told apart from a full-size one. びよういん, with a full-size よ, means a beauty salon. びょういん, with a small ょ, means a hospital. A character so small that it can’t be read is a problem too, but if in doubt, make it clearly small.

The shape is exactly the same as the full-size character. Small っ is つ made smaller, and small ゃ is や made smaller. The stroke order doesn’t change either.

Print puts it in a slightly different place

If you look at small kana in a printed book or on screen, you may notice they don’t sit quite where the handwriting rule says. The W3C document Requirements for Japanese Text Layout says that small kana are placed “at the vertical center and to the right of the horizontal center of the character frame” in vertical writing, and “at the horizontal center and below the vertical center” in horizontal writing.

So in print, a small character in vertical text is shifted right but centred top to bottom, and in horizontal text it is shifted down but centred left to right. That is slightly different from the handwritten top right and bottom left.

If your textbook and a novel seem to disagree, neither is wrong. When you write by hand, top right and bottom left are all you need.

When it falls at the start of a line

In typesetting, there is a rule against starting a line with a small kana. But the same W3C document notes that some typesetting does not apply this rule to small kana, and that many books follow that looser approach.

In school compositions on genkō yōshi, a small character takes its own square, and most guides say that if it falls in the first square of a line, you simply write it there. This differs from the rule for commas and full stops, which go into the last square of the previous line instead. Schools and exams sometimes have their own instructions, so follow those if you have them.

Small katakana

Katakana has the same small characters: ッ, ャ, ュ and ョ. Loanwords also use small ァ, ィ, ゥ, ェ and ォ, as in ファ, ティ and ウィ. They go in the same place as in hiragana.

The long vowel mark ー is not a small character. It goes in the middle of its square, as a vertical line in vertical writing and a horizontal line in horizontal writing. Small characters and ー in names are also covered in Teaching a Child to Write Their Own Name in Japanese Kana.

Check the sound before you write

When learners struggle with small characters, I think the trouble often starts with the sound rather than the writing. If you can’t hear the difference between きって (stamp) and きて (come), you won’t know where the っ goes.

Before writing, I would say the word and clap once for each beat. き・っ・て is three claps, き・て is two. The っ makes no sound, yet it takes a full beat. How to count beats is covered in Hearing Long Vowels and Small っ in Japanese.

Contracted sounds work the other way. きゃく (guest) is two beats, きゃ・く, but it takes three squares: き, ゃ and く. The number of beats and the number of squares don’t match, and I think this confuses many learners. きゃ is one sound written with two characters. If you explain that the small character joins the one before it to make one sound, it also explains where to write it. Reading contracted sounds is covered in Dakuon, Handakuon and Yōon.

Practising the shapes in StudyX Japanese Letters Tracer

StudyX Japanese Letters Tracer is an iPhone and iPad app for practising the stroke order of hiragana and katakana. When you choose a character, the model line grows one stroke at a time in the correct order. Write one stroke with your finger or a stylus and lift it, and the next stroke of the model appears. There is no scoring or right-or-wrong judgement.

It covers 142 characters: hiragana and katakana with their dakuten and handakuten forms. Small characters such as っ, ゃ, ゅ and ょ, and contracted sounds such as きゃ, are not included. But as above, a small character has the same shape as its full-size version. The app covers つ, や, ゆ and よ, and in katakana ツ, ヤ, ユ, ヨ, ア, イ, ウ, エ and オ, so you can practise the shapes and stroke order of every small character there. It also covers the characters that come before a contracted sound, such as き, し and ち, and ぎ, じ, び and ぴ.

Once the shapes are steady, practise position and size on paper with a cross in each square. In the app, the cross guide shows dotted lines through the middle of the character, dividing the space into four quarters. It works as a picture of the “top right quarter” and “bottom left quarter” when you explain where small characters go. There is no square frame on the screen, and the model can be shown large, medium or small.

It is a one-time purchase with no ads and no in-app purchases. On iPhone it runs in landscape. Where dakuten go is covered in How to Write Dakuten and Handakuten, and a first session in Getting Started with StudyX Japanese Letters Tracer.