East Asian typography is the application of typography to the

writing systems A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, Korean, and Vietnamese languages. Scripts used in East Asian typography include

Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...

(known as kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean, and

Chữ Hán Chữ Hán (𡨸漢, literally "Chinese characters", ), Chữ Nho (𡨸儒, literally "Confucian characters", ) or Hán tự (漢字, ), is the Vietnamese term for Chinese characters, used to write Văn ngôn (which is a form of Classical Chines ...

in Vietnamese), hiragana,

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fro ...

, hangul, and

Chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ; ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters (''Chữ Hán'') to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented ...

History

Typography with movable type was invented during the eleventh-century Song dynasty in China by

Bi Sheng Bi Sheng (; 972–1051 AD) was a Chinese artisan, engineer, and inventor of the world's first movable type technology, with printing being one of the Four Great Inventions. Bi Sheng's system was made of Chinese porcelain and was invented betwe ...

(990–1051). His movable type system was manufactured from ceramic materials, and clay type printing continued to be practiced in China until the Qing dynasty. Wang Zhen was one of the pioneers of wooden movable type. Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore the character faces down and the types could be replaced only by carving new pieces. Metal movable type was first invented in Korea during the Goryeo dynasty, approximately 1230. Hua Sui introduced bronze type printing to China in 1490 AD. The diffusion of both movable-type systems was limited and the technology did not spread beyond East and Central Asia, however. Before the 19th century, woodblock printing was favored over movable type to print East Asian text, because movable type required reusable types for thousands of

. However, the emergence of newspapers in the 19th century made it a worthwhile investment. The first type foundry in Japan, Tsukiji Type Foundry, was established in 1873 by . Starting in the 1960s, the People's Republic of China's Shanghai Printing Technology and Research Institute (SPTRI) developed new typefaces for Simplified Chinese in the four main Chinese type families: imitation Song,

gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

Ming The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han pe ...

, and regular script. Of these type families, the communist government favored gothic typefaces because they were plain and "represented a break with the past." The SPTRI was subsequently privatized in the 1990s.

Type families

Ming typefaces

or Song (known as Mincho in Japanese) is a style of typeface characterized by contrasting vertical and horizontal strokes with a small triangle nestled into the stroke. These are called (, literally "fish scales") and are analogous to

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

s in Latin typefaces.

Gothic typefaces

Gothic typefaces are the equivalent of sans-serif fonts in East Asian scripts. They can be further divided into two main types: round sans fonts have rounded ends, while square sans fonts have square ends.

Imitation Song

Regular script

Typographic conventions

Typographic symbols

Japanese has a set of characteristic punctuation marks, see List of Japanese typographic symbols. Instead of underlines or cursive, Chinese, Japanese and Korean use emphasis marks.

Ruby text

Ruby characters are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of

logograms to show their pronunciation.

References

General sources

* .

External links

Chinese Type Archive
an open database of Chinese typographical concepts and typefaces Typography articles needing expert attention Typography {{typ-stub