I hope this is not a silly question... I am just beginning with learning Chinese, just started to use Skritter a few days ago, and am still busy with the list of radicals. :-) But, because I found radicals a little bit boring I had a look into a book with real dialogues (something like: "Hello. how are you?" - "I am fine. Good bye."). Trying to make an own list in Skritter, I wonder what is the best practice to deal with person's names. Skimming through several pages I found for example a chapter with a list of popular Chinese family names (one character each), and in the dialogues they use the form [family name]+[first name] (three or more characters，example: 李子强). Now, I tried to add one example to a custom list and Skritter gives me the options to add them as a word or as a sentence? Actually they are two words, but not sentences. What would be the best choice?

And how about a phrase or idiom that consists of more than one word, but I would not consider them as a sentence? The choice "word" or "sentence" is a bit confusing for me at this early stage. I thought about skipping these names or short phrases, but that cannot be the best solution.

Thanks for your suggestions. :)

I think names and idioms are usually added as "words" rather than sentences.

This might save you some time, although I often find that creating a list myself is part of the learning process:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/customlists/search?query=names

Thank you for your reply.

OK, I will add them as "words" when I am asked. I still didn't find out how different Skritter handles words or sentences - as long as I am just learning my radicals.

I didn't realize before, that there are so much more lists, than just the "official". I believe some day they can really become useful. :)

I don't think it handles words and sentences differently. Sentences just take a long time to write so you might want to disable "writing" for those ones.