The following four tables are intended to help in inputting Japanese text via a computer keyboard (Windows XP, Macintosh OS X). The order of the syllable characters is the same as in the Kana romanization tables. The roman letters given with each character indicate the keys to press in order to input the character in the common conversion systems. Keystroke combinations that differ from those in the romanization tables are highlighted in red.

An additional aid for inputting punctuation marks and symbols is the list Special characters and symbols.

::::: Expanded fifty sounds table :::::

*  obsolete
** inputted only with “wyi” or “wye” on Macintosh computers

The above table lists the basic kana characters from the Fifty sounds table and the kana (shaded gray) that are derived from them, along with their transcription into roman letters. Each cell in the table contains a hiragana on the left and the corresponding katakana on the right, and under them gives the combination of two or three letters that must be keyed in to input the kana.

::::: Table of small-size kana :::::

* As a glottal-stop sound within a word, this kana is inputted by doubling the following consonant (for example, massugu → まっすぐ); at the end of a word it is inputted by doubling any consonant (except n) and deleting any consonant that occurs after the conversion (for example, att → あっ).

The shorter and simpler input according to the following two supplementary tables is advisable if the syllable to be inputted consists of a kana followed by a small-size kana of the vowel row aiueo or of the y-row.

::::: Ya-yu-yo supplementary table :::::

The above supplementary table lists syllables that are written with two characters. The first character of each of these syllables is taken from the Expanded fifty sounds table, and the second, smaller character is taken from the y-row of the Table of small-size kana.

::::: Katakana supplementary table :::::

The Katakana supplementary table lists one syllable character and 138 character combinations that are used to reproduce non-Japanese words and proper names. The extra character and character combinations in this table are in addition to the traditional inventory of characters in the preceding three tables.