to / ト
The last of the T row — a simple “to” in just two strokes. Same sound as hiragana と, opening tomato, toast, and notebook.
Pronunciation
The character ト represents the syllable 'to', identical in pronunciation to hiragana と. Extremely common in loanwords — tomato, toast, notebook, list, and many words ending in '-to' or '-tto'.
ト matches hiragana と — a clean “to.” One of the simplest katakana to write, it appears constantly: トマト (tomato), トースト (toast), ノート (notebook), テスト (test). Its two strokes come from the kanji 止.
How to write ト
Trace ト 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 long vertical stroke straight down the left.
A short diagonal jutting out to the right from the middle of the vertical — a small wedge.
Origin
Katakana ト comes from the upper-right portion of the kanji 止 (to / shi, “to stop”). Just that corner — a vertical and a short wedge — became ト.
Common words starting with ト
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing ト by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
Lock it into memory
Reading is only half of it. Drill the katakana you’ve learned with spaced-repetition flashcards — the fastest way to make them stick.