The difference between manual and sequential shifting:

One of the reasons I came up with this idea was because it's somewhat similar to modern automatics with 6 or more gears where there's not enough room for the gear stick to go PRN(D)54321.  Where instead it uses what some car companies call a manual mode.  However, there's hardly anything manual about it because all you do to shift is move it aside from Drive and move the shifter up or down.  And the main reason I don't call it a manual mode is because there's already a name for it.  It irritates me that they call it a manual mode when the original name for this kind of shifting is known as "Sequential Shifting".

Even when car companies and people refer to it as a manual mode or an automated manual mode, I'm not convinced because it does not use the traditional H-pattern.  Names I refer to it as are Sequential shift mode, Semi-Automatic mode, or USA (Uneducated Shifting for Americans).  I kind of wish that car companies would change the name of manual mode to sequential mode or semi-automatic mode because every time I type in "Automated Manual" on Google, all I get is that Up/Down pattern.  At least my idea you could called an Automated Manual as if you were in Drive, you could move the shifter to a true H-pattern manual mode on the side when needed.  If you are new to my blog and don't know my idea is to make stick shifts more appealing to new customers, please start reading from the first blog post.

Basically the difference between Manual and Sequential is that a manual uses the H-pattern shift method and the Sequential uses an Up/Down pattern.