How to Type っ (Small Tsu) and ん in Japanese

Two characters cause more typing confusion than the other 44 combined: the small tsu っ and the standalone n ん. Neither has its own key, and both follow rules that no one tells you up front. This guide fixes that in five minutes.

What っ (small tsu) actually is

The small tsu — officially the sokuon — isn't pronounced like つ at all. It marks a brief stop, a doubled consonant: the difference between きて (kite, "come") and きって(kitte, "stamp"). In English terms it's like the tiny pause in "bookcase" between the k sounds.

How to type っ: double the next consonant

You almost never type the small tsu directly. Instead, type the consonant of the next syllable twice, and the IME inserts っ for you:

The doubled letter is always the first consonant of what follows: t before て, k before こ, s before し. For ちょっと-type words, double the t of to — chotto, not "choっto" gymnastics.

On the rare occasion you need a small tsu by itself, type ltu or xtu → っ. (The l/x prefix makes any kana small: lya → ゃ.)

How to type ん: always nn

The character んis the only kana that's a bare consonant, and that creates an ambiguity problem. If you type n and then a, did you mean な — or ん followed by あ? The IME can't read your mind, so it assumes な.

The fix is simple: type nn for ん, every time.

Technically, a single n works when the next letter is a consonant other than n or y (sensei does produce せんせい). But the exceptions are exactly where beginners get burned — before vowels, before な row sounds, before や row sounds, and at the end of a word. nn always works, costs one extra keystroke, and removes a whole category of typos. Build the habit.

Bonus: the other small kana (ゃ ゅ ょ)

While we're on small characters: the small ゃ ゅ ょ work differently from the small tsu. They combine with the previous character into one blended syllable, and you type them as a unit: きょう (today) is kyou, しゅみ (hobby) is shumi, ちょっと is chotto — the small ょ comes from cho, and the small っ from the doubled t. Once you see that last example as cho + tto, every combination word in Japanese becomes typeable.

The two mistakes everyone makes

• Typing tsu for っ: typing kitsute gives きつて, a different (non-)word. Small tsu = doubled consonant, never tsu.
• Trusting single n: typing konnichihawith two n's total gives こんいちは… missing the second ん sound. Count it out: ko-n-ni-chi-ha needs ko + nn + ni + chi + ha.

One more habit worth stealing from experienced typists: when a word looks wrong on screen, don't hunt for the typo letter by letter — re-say the word in your head, syllable by syllable, and retype it. Nine times out of ten the bug is a missing double consonant or a single n that should have been two, and sounding the word out finds it instantly.

Drill it until it's automatic

These two rules only become natural through repetition — and they show up constantly in beginner vocabulary (こんにちは, がんばれ, いただきます…). Type real words and the rules install themselves. Start with the basics in our hiragana typing guide, then practice on words you'll actually use.