Writing & spelling · 3 min
How small is small, and where does it go
Write ゃ ゅ ょ っ carelessly and you have written a different word. Size and position follow rules.
There are six of them
In hiragana the small characters are ゃ ゅ ょ and っ. Five more — ぁ ぃ ぅ ぇ ぉ — exist for transcribing foreign sounds, but they are rare in hiragana and mostly appear in katakana.
They do two jobs. ゃ ゅ ょ merge with the kana before them into a single sound (yōon), and っ takes a silent beat (sokuon).
Size and placement
- About half the size of a normal kana — think of filling a quarter of the square.
- In horizontal writing, tuck it into the lower left of its square.
- In vertical writing, it goes to the upper right. Change direction and the position changes.
- The shape is identical to the full-size character. Only the size changes.
In handwriting, being clearly smaller matters more than exact placement. What must be unmistakable is that it is small.
Wrong size, wrong word
| Written small | Written full size |
|---|---|
| きゃく (kyaku, guest) | きやく (kiyaku, agreement) |
| かって (katte, as one pleases) | かつて (katsute, formerly) |
| びょういん (byōin, hospital) | びよういん (biyōin, beauty salon) |
| ジュース (jūsu, juice) | ジユース (jiyūsu, nothing) |
びょういん and びよういん genuinely catch native speakers out now and then — hospital versus hair salon is an awkward mix-up.
Typing them
In a Japanese IME, yōon happens automatically: type kya and you get きゃ. Nothing to think about.
Same for the sokuon — double the next consonant. Typing kitte gives you きって.
To enter a small kana on its own, prefix it with x or l: xya gives ゃ, xtu gives っ. This is how you hand-assemble combinations like ファ.