"For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Nasal consonantoids fully voiced finals." Initials are made up of consonants. Most of characters are preceding finals with initials while some characters are pronounced without initials. There are 19 initials in total. "For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Initials." There are basically nine tones in Cantonese. Tones play an important role to distinguish meanings in Cantonese. Tones also forms melodies in poem and prose composition. There are two ways to mark tones in the scheme. One is by number and another by marks. It is hard to type the tones by typewriters. It therefore simply uses the one in the phonetic symbols for reference. "For detail explanation of the phonetic system, see S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)#Tones."