Frequently Asked Questions

How convenient that you asked that! ;)

Characters.

Skritter is the best way to learn Chinese and Japanese characters, Hanzi and Kanji respectively (our tag line is "The Write way to learn Japanese and Chinese characters.")

You should use Skritter to learn your characters for three reasons. First, we use active study methods. Every time you review a character on Skritter, you are prompted to reproduce it, and reproduction teaches better and faster than passive methods. Second, Skritter takes the boredom out of practicing, so reviewing doesn't have to be something to avoid. We've even had users claiming to be addicted! Finally, Skritter's spaced repetition algorithm optimizes your study time so that you study less and remember more characters.

Characters (the Chinese and Japanese kind, not the cute kind like our logo).

Skritter's main focus is the writing of characters and vocabulary words. We also train tones, readings, and definitions. Those four parts are actively recalled and scheduled using spaced repetition principles.

Left arrow

: back

Z or /

: undo last stroke

X or .

: erase

S or L

: show

V or M

: correct/incorrect

D or K

: open and close word popup

Space, enter, or right arrow

: next (For pinyin prompts, enter checks input first, then goes next.)

1-4 or 6-9

: input grade and go next (For tone prompts, 1-5 and 6-0 input tones instead.)

A or '

: play the pronunciation audio

Ctrl+Alt+F

: toggle framerate display

Ctrl+Alt+D

: toggle raw squig overlay

You can choose what you would like to study from the practice navigation page, which you can get to by clicking "practice" on any page.

When you select a list, section, or scratchpad, you will only practice the content from those sources. All other content you have added will be ignored. Practicing everything at once is the recommended practice mode since it mixes all your vocabulary sources and makes the best use of our spaced repetition scheduling algorithm. However, many people just want to study a few words (scratchpad), prep for a quiz from a textbook (section), or focus on one textbook (list).

There are three easy ways for you to significantly increase how much Skritter teaches you.

First, be cautious about adding vocabulary and study "Everything" as often as you can. Being careful about adding vocabulary prevents you from becoming overwhelmed, and the study Everything mode always picks the items you were most likely to forget next.

Second, let the percent values in the prompt guide your practice sessions. Below the current prompt on the practice page, you will notice a percent. These numbers range from 0% to 1000% and tell you whether you are over or under-practicing. You want to aim for items that are around 100% due. If you are consistently getting items that are more than 300%, that means for best results you should be practicing more frequently. If you often get numbers well below 100%, that means you should either add more words or practice for less time at regular intervals.

Finally, use the grading buttons to give Skritter more information about exactly how well you know something. To turn on the grading buttons, go to the "Settings" menu on the practice page and turn them on. When the buttons are on, you will be prompted to self-grade every prompt. You do not need to self grade everything as Skritter will still assign a grade like normal, but the buttons are particularly useful for indicating edge cases. Say you know a character really well, mark it as 4 ("too easy") and Skritter will make sure you don't see it for a much longer period of time. Similarly, marking something 2 ("so-so") lets Skritter know to test you again on that character, but not as soon as if you had completely forgotten it. If a word is really tough, you can star it to focus on it later.

By far the most common problem with logging in is a forgotten or mistyped password. Skritter passwords are case sensitive, which means that if you entered "MyPassword" when signing up, you cannot login with "mypassword" or "myPassword"--it must be exactly "MyPassword".

To recover your password, click here and enter your username. An important note about recovering your password is that your user name and display name are not the same. Entering your display name in the password recovery field will not work, you must provide your user name. If you have forgotten your user name, check your email for our "Welcome to Skritter" email which includes your registered user name.

We get asked about this a lot, and we would love to have an app on a mobile platform. Seriously, what could be better than practicing a few characters with a touch screen during your downtime, waiting in the dentists office, waiting for the subway, etc? Unfortunately, Skritter is written in Flash and as of spring 2010, Apple has blocked Flash in the App Store. We will be trying to find a way to make this happen.

Android devices are getting native Flash support in the Android 2.2 OS (Froyo). We'll be working to optimize Skritter for this platform, and things are looking very promising for that. We likely won't make a native Android app, because the web app with Flash is going to satisfy.