wo / を
The second of the W row — three strokes 'wo' (pronounced 'o') that exist almost solely as the direct-object particle.
Pronunciation
The character を represents the syllable 'wo', though it is pronounced essentially identically to 'o' (the same as お) in modern Japanese. Its sole modern use is as the direct-object particle, marking what a verb acts upon — one of the most common particles in the language. You'll never see を inside ordinary vocabulary words; it appears only as a grammatical particle.
を is one of the most-used characters in written Japanese — but it appears almost exclusively as the direct-object particle, the small grammatical marker that says "this is what the verb is acting on" (パンを食べる, "eat bread"; 本を読む, "read a book"). Despite its romaji wo, modern speakers pronounce it identically to お — o. You will essentially never see を inside ordinary vocabulary words; if you see を in a sentence, it's the particle.
How to write を
Trace を on the canvas at the top of the page. Animated arrows show each stroke's direction; trace along them and the stroke fills in. Each numbered step below explains what that stroke does.
A short horizontal stroke at the upper middle — quick, left to right.
A long diagonal stroke that crosses through stroke 1 and sweeps down to the lower left.
A long flowing stroke that begins at the upper right, crosses through the middle of the character, sweeps down and to the right, and ends with a small upward hook on the lower right. The crossed-diagonal-with-flowing-tail shape is を's signature.
Origin
Hiragana を traces back to the cursive form of the kanji 遠 (en / tooi) — meaning "far" or "distant." The kanji's complex layout collapsed into the three strokes we write today, preserving the upper accent, the central crossing, and the flowing right-side tail.
Common words starting with を
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing を by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
Lock it into memory
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