Introduction
It is advised that learning Katakana prior to Hiragana may be more useful in some circumstances. Thus, we suggest you start with Katakana first. Also, for the Hiragana Reading Test on this site, you are expected to have a knowledge of Katakana.
Katakana, which was created by modifying a small number of Chinese characters is mainly straight lines and more angular than Hiragana. It is basically used to represent words and names borrowed from other languages except from Chinese.
The Basic rules of writing Japanese letters:
The basic stroke order is (1) write across from the left to the right, then (2) write down from the top to the bottom, although there are a few exceptions when the letter does not consist of straight horizontal or vertical strokes.  All letters should be written approximately the same size.
How to work with Hiragana Steps
Katakana Steps is a full course teaching the writing of Katakana, one of the two Japanese syllabaries. There are hundreds of sound examples, reading examples and at the end of the course a reading test. We have also prepared practice sheets where you can practice the writing of the syllables and new words. There is a sound for every syllable and word introduced in the lesson. Click on the sound icons to play the sound file. The animation of the syllable explains the correct stroke order of the character. The red number is indicating stroke order and number of strokes used in the character. The letter at the bottom right is the roomaji representation of the Kanna. Click on Next and Back to move to the next or previous set of characters. Clicking on Index will open a navigation window where you can directly access any of the characters. Click on the Practice icon and you will be presented with a pre-written practice sheet that you can print out and use to practice your writing. At the bottom of every practice sheet you will find an additional Link for printing a generic practice sheet. TO START CLICK -HERE- OR THE NEXT ICON AT THE TOP BAR