This slide summarizes the typical steps when typing in Japanese using a standard IME for Windows.

The user types Japanese in romaji transcription using a QWERTY keyboard. As they type the transcription is automatically converted to hiragana or katakana. Ranges of characters are accepted by a key press as they go along. To convert a range of characters to kanji, the user presses a key such as the space bar. Typically the IME will automatically insert into the text the kanji that were last selected for the transcription that has been input. If this is not the desired kanji sequence, the user presses the key again and a selection list pops up, usually ordered in terms of frequency of selection. The user picks the kanji characters required, and confirms their choice, then moves on.

Note that there are only a few alternatives for the sequence かいぎ. If the user had looked up かい and ぎ separately they would have been faced each time with a large number of choices. The provision of a dictionary as part of the IME for lookup of longer phrases is one way of speeding up the process of text entry for the user.

Ordering by frequency and memory of the last conversion are additional methods of assisting the user to find the right character more quickly.