An Introduction to the Basic Rules of Japanese Typesetting
This series shares knowledge about fonts that are useful for those whose first language is not Japanese when choosing and suggesting Japanese fonts for developing services in Japanese.
Following up on the previous topic, “An Introduction to the Basics of Written Japanese,” this article introduces basic rules of Japanese typesetting.
1. Character Design in Japanese and Latin Typefaces
Japanese characters are designed in a different manner from Latin letters. Let’s begin by looking at these differences.
Latin typefaces are designed using five lines, such as the baseline, as guidance.
On the other hand, Japanese typefaces are usually designed to be contained in a square, and this square area is called the “imaginary body.”
What was originally called “body” in metal types became “imaginary body” when digitized.
This imaginary body contains the “letter face,” which is the part with the actual character. The font size for Japanese typefaces means the size of the imaginary body.
The size of a letter face varies among different typefaces; some are designed to fill up the imaginary body, and others are rather small. Additionally, kana is slightly smaller than kanji.
In Latin text, in principle, words are considered as a unit when determining the position of line breaks. When lines need to be broken in the middle of a word, hyphenation is used. On the other hand, in Japanese text, lines can generally be formatted on a per-character basis, and line breaks may occur even in the middle of a word, except for characters subject to Japanese line-breaking rules (kinsoku shori).. In this case, no hyphenation is needed.
2. Horizontal and Vertical Settings
Originally, vertical setting was used in Japanese, where characters are positioned from the top to the bottom and lines from the right to the left. After foreign letters and books began circulating in Japan, horizontal setting was used alongside it.
Currently, both horizontal and vertical settings are used in a mixed way in Japan. As mentioned earlier, Japanese fonts are designed in squares, so they can be aligned in both horizontal and vertical directions.
The direction of lines tells if it is set horizontally or vertically. For the horizontal setting, lines are put from the top to the bottom, and for the vertical setting, from the right to the left.
The vertical setting is used mainly for books, and it is also sometimes used for flyers, banners, signs, etc., to fit into the size of their space.
The horizontal setting is used for wider purposes, especially for monitors on computers and electronic devices.
In the case of magazines, both vertical and horizontal settings can be used on the same page.
For each setting, we need to pay particular attention to special characters, including punctuation and brackets. They are put in a different direction or position in vertical and horizontal settings. Japanese fonts include the characters for vertical settings and horizontal settings separately, and by using the font in software adapted for the Japanese language, characters for the correct setting direction can be automatically used and displayed.
3. How to Set Characters in a Text
When setting Latin text, proportional letterforms, which have different widths for different characters or weights, are used.
On the contrary, Japanese characters are designed in an imaginary body, which is the same size even when the shape or weight of kanji or kana is changed, so the letter width is constant.
In Japanese typesetting for body text, it is considered easy to read and ideal when these imaginary bodies are lined up without spaces in between. It is the same case for justified texts. This state is called “solid setting” or “beta-gumi” in Japanese, as a combination of the words “beta,” which refers to a state where a text box is filled with characters without margins, and “kumi (gumi),” which refers to typesetting. As the width of each character is consistent in Japanese fonts, using solid setting keeps the vertical and horizontal distance between two characters the same. In this way, lines become aligned, making characters highly readable.
4. Full-Width and Half-Width Letterforms
The font size of a Japanese typeface is the size of the imaginary body, which is called “full width.” The size that is half of the full width is called “half width.” Japanese typefaces include both full-width and half-width numbers and Latin alphabets, alongside proportional ones, so that a user can choose one based on what the text looks like with other Japanese characters. Using fixed full-width and half-width letterforms allows for solid setting, as mentioned in section 3. In particular, using full-width or half-width numbers for solid setting is often practiced in Japan.
When using numbers or Latin alphabets in a text, proportional letterforms are usually used. However, as introduced in section 3, full-width or half-width letterforms might be used in order to align the lines of characters or for charts in a document, display on electronic devices, or signage, because their widths are the same and it is easier to create a design template for them.
So far, we’ve looked at the basic rules of Japanese typesetting.
In the next article, we’ll introduce “Japanese-Latin mixed typesetting,” which combines Japanese and Latin characters in the same text.
Comments