For the feature wish list: a function for drilling on frequently confused characters.

I sometimes put two similar, or similar sounding, or otherwise confusing characters into Anki with a question like: "what do these both mean?" or "What are the characters for meaning1 and meaning2".

This sort of comparison question helps me focus on differentiating them.

You can mark items you know you're getting muddled with, with a star. You could then put those items into the scratchpad and drill them that way.

Thanks Byzanti,

But I think I'm really asking for a new feature... something that would allow me to fail on a word, then I realize that I am confusing that word with something else, a search feature (and the drill throughs and other searches have the covered) that would let me find the other word(s) I confuse this with, and then create a question type that brings both or all three words together and focuses me on distinguishing between these confusing words.

It's a big chunk of development and maybe the payoff is low - but for the wish list.

Yeah, finding which characters you are confusing is a bit of a pain. What happens to me is that I get both of them wrong, and they both start coming up more and more, and then I notice which I'm getting confused with.

Despite what I said above, how I resolve this myself is to make a note of the other word/character in the definition itself. It's a bit of a hint, but it works. Every time you come across either word you'll be reminded of the other one, and you'll start to make a mental note of the differences.

This works for both confusion over how characters are written, and confusion over meaning. But if it's meaning confusion I also like to ask my teacher what the differences are between them. Then they also get much easier to remember.

It's not the technical solution you're wanting, but it works! (The star thing above, I don't do myself btw - but works if you want to drill them.)

I do something similar--I put "Not to be confused with X" in my mnemonics area. The definition area would be even stronger, and perhaps I'll try that next.