In this paper, we analyze the streamline diffusion finite element method (SDFEM) for a model singularly perturbed convection-diffusion equation on a Shishkin triangular mesh and hybrid meshes. Supercloseness property of uI−uN is obtained, where uI is the interpolant of the solution u
Nearby in the stack
and
uN
is the SDFEM's solution. The analysis depends on novel integral inequalities for the diffusion and convection parts in the bilinear form. Furthermore, analysis on hybrid meshes shows that bilinear elements should be recommended for the exponential layer, not for the characteristic layer. Finally, numerical experiments support these theoretical results.