It's sometimes really hard to tell single character words from characters (I'm in Japanese, so single character words aren't just characters). Is there a sure-fire way to do this? Is there something in the definition that tells you?

Also, if the single character is a word by itself, it is not included under the "Words containing _" section.

I don't get this at all

I'll try explaining again:
So, first of all, the way characters and words are defined in the Chinese and Japanese sections of Skritter are different. It's explained better than I can explain in the FAQ: http://www.skritter.com/faq#progress_words_vs_chars

I'm asking if there's a way to tell apart Component Characters and normal words. It's not at all clear from the definitions when the character has only one reading displayed.

Looking at it on the study page, or where? In lists it should say something like "comp". If you're studying it as writing, then on the study page, it won't have a separate character area below it in the prompt. And I think you can't study the components for reading and definition practice.

(I could be hilariously wrong on these, since it's been a while since I've looked closely at the Japanese web stuff.)

When I look it up in My Words, I sometimes have trouble telling comps from words:

http://i.imgur.com/rnSQu.png

I was also having trouble telling them apart when looking at their definition, but then I realized that the comp with only have Writing under the parts that you can learn, which is displayed in the definition:

http://i.imgur.com/NgHN9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YMSgv.jpg

(If we just ignore that anime that I didn't close on the right side of my screen.)

So, uh, problem solved.

what is that anime on the right?

@russel359: it says "めだかボックス" (Medaka Bokkusu) at the top.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medaka_Box

Produced by Gainax (Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion). Premiered last month, it seems.

Oh wow, I totally missed this. But yeah, Medaka Box. It's amazing. You should totally watch it. The best thing about it is that it's ridiculous. The anime definitely did just premier last week, so there are only like four episodes so far. The manga, though is about three years old, with 15 volumes. Super good, if a little hard to understand (the author has good word and grammar variety, which makes for good writing but not excellent learning material).

weirdesky, I stopped watching anime a few years ago. Just like I stopped playing computer games at the age of 25. Oversaturation. That, and at one point I just wanted to be active, as opposed to losing myself in passive entertainment. It may happen to you, too. But until that happens (if it ever will happen), enjoy all the good stuff. :)

Haha, truth is, I hate most anime. It's just this one is so ridiculous that I can tolerate it XD While two characters are having a completely normal conversation, one of them will just be rolling back and forth across a table. While talking. Like it's not even weird.

weirdesky, you just described most of the anime out there. ;-)
For something a little bit more real (well, not really) check out The Taste of Tea: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413893/.

Naaahhhh, they're not ridiculous enough XD. 茶の味 has been recommended to me a couple of times, but I've always kind of shied away from it because I'm not a big fan of real-y movies. After all, if I wanted reality, I could go outside XD