E (kana)

In Japanese writing, the kana え (hiragana) and エ (katakana) (romanised e) occupy the fourth place, between う and お, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 34th, between こ and て. In the table at right (ordered by columns, from right to left), え lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the fourth row (え段, "row E"). Both represent Close-mid front unrounded vowel.

Derivation
え and エ originate, via man'yōgana, from the kanji 衣 and 江, respectively.

The archaic kana ゑ (we), as well as many non-initial occurrences of the character へ (he), have entered the modern Japanese language as え. The directional particle へ is today pronounced "e", though not written as え. Compare this to は (ha) and を (wo), which are pronounced "wa" and "o" when used as grammatical particles.

For the kana romanized sometimes as "e", see we (kana).

Variant forms
Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぇ, ェ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as ヴェ (ve). In several Okinawan writing systems, a small ぇ is also combined with the kana く(ku) and ふ (fu or hu) to form the digraphs くぇ kwe and ふぇ hwe.

Transliteration
In the Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki systems of romanization, both え and エ are transliterated as "e". In the Polivanov system of cyrillization, the kana are transliterated as "э".

Stroke order
The hiragana え is made with two strokes: The katakana エ is made with three strokes: This is also the way to make the Latin letter "I" (although the correct upper case form does not look like the lower case Latin letter "l")
 * 1) At the top, a short diagonal stroke proceeding downward and to the right.
 * 2) At the bottom, a stroke composed of a horizontal line, a diagonal proceeding downward and to the left, and a rightward stroke resembling a tilde (~).
 * 1) At the top, a horizontal stroke from left to right.
 * 2) A downward vertical stroke starting in the center of the first stroke.
 * 3) At the bottom, a horizontal stroke parallel to the first stroke, and touching the second. This stroke is usually slightly longer than the first.

Other communicative representations

 * Full Braille representation


 * Computer encodings


 * Archaic and Hentaigana