spot, point, mark, speck
Came from Chinese. It usually shows up when the kanji is joined to another, forming a compound word.
It is Japanese. It usually shows up when the kanji stands alone or is followed by hiragana.
The order matters: it is what makes handwriting come out legible, and it is how dictionaries index the character.
Visual decomposition, for recognising and comparing — not always the character's origin.
Where it appears is highlighted — the translation doesn't always make that visible.
え、そうなの?じゃあこれ、ほとんど全部の点でこっちのほうがいいってことか。
E, sou nano? Jaa kore, hotondo zenbu no ten de kocchi no hou ga ii tte koto ka.
Really? So this one's better in almost every way.
Readings and meanings: KANJIDIC2 · Decomposition: KRADFILE · Both from Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, CC BY-SA 4.0 · data from 2026-09-07 · Strokes: KanjiVG, Ulrich Apel, CC BY-SA 3.0