To alleviate the confusion and to save time writing, kanji that were used as "man'yōgana" eventually gave rise to hiragana and katakana. Hiragana was developed from "man'yōgana" written in the highly cursive "sōsho" () style popularly used by women; katakana was developed by Buddhist monks as a form of shorthand, utilizing, in most cases, only fragments (for example, the first or last few strokes) of "man'yōgana" characters. In some cases, one "man'yōgana" character for a given syllable gave rise to the current hiragana equivalent, and a different one gave rise to the current katakana equivalent. For example, the hiragana (ru) is derived from the "man'yōgana" , whereas the katakana (ru) is derived from the "man'yōgana" .