Differentiating between 收 and 受 I've noticed a lot of people have trouble differentiating between 收 and 受.

Both their pronunciations and meanings are similar.

How to differentiate between the two?

What tricks and tips are there to remember when to use which? (Instead of the other.)
You may see the definitions of these two characters on zdic.net (maybe you already know), an online dictionary which is convenient for looking up the characters.

As a native speaker, I think (subjectively) the main difference of these two characters is that 收 emphasizes the action of receiving, gathering or reducing, and 受 emphasizes the finish of receiving an action, which is something sort of similar to the perfect tense.

I guess that your doubt comes from distinguishing 接收 from 接受? In some sentenses these two words are almost the same, for example:


  他接受了这份礼物。
  他接收了这份礼物。


But I still feel that there is a tiny differece as I said above, 接收 puts more significance on the action of receiving.

Another differece may be that, 收 is usually used with "concrete" things like gift, data, signal, while 受 is usually used with abstract things like suggestion, training, offer, and only some "concrete" things.

Hope it helps.

Reference

收 on zdic.net
www.zdic.net/z/1a/js/6536.htm

受 on zdic.net
www.zdic.net/z/16/js/53D7.htm