Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems ; they have corresponding character sets in which each kana, or character, represents one mora ( one sound in the Japanese language ).

Hiragana is the more widely used script in Japan today, while katakana, meant for formal documents originally, is used similarly to italics in alphabetic scripts.

Hiragana is used to write native words for which there are no kanji, including particles such as から kara " from ", and suffixes such as さん ~ san " Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms ." Likewise, hiragana is used to write words whose kanji form is obscure, not known to the writer or readers, or too formal for the writing purpose.

There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.

For a Japanese Singer Library, the user can input gojūon lyrics in hiragana, katakana or romaji writing.