Katakana Letter Me

The Katakana Letter Me at U+30E1 represents the mora “me” in Japanese katakana, pronounced like the “me” in “metal” but shorter and without stress. It belongs to the Katakana block, the Unicode range used for the angular Japanese syllabary alongside hiragana and kanji. In modern Japanese, メ appears most often in loanwords, foreign names, brand names, and technical terms written in katakana. Common examples include メモ for “memo,” メール for “email” or “mail,” and メニュー for “menu,” where it records a Japanese syllable rather than an alphabetic consonant-vowel pair. It is also used for emphasis, headings, onomatopoeia, and stylized writing, especially in signage, manga, advertising, and user interfaces. In dictionaries and language-learning materials, メ is taught as the katakana counterpart of the hiragana め, with the same sound but different script function. The character can be mistaken by learners for similar angular katakana such as ヌ or ナ when handwritten quickly, so stroke order and context are important for recognition.