East Asian typography

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

East Asian typography is the application of

writing systems used for the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages. Scripts represented in East Asian typography include Chinese characters, kana, and hangul
.

History

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Typesetting with movable type was invented in China during the Song dynasty by Bi Sheng (990–1051).[1] His system used ceramic materials; clay type printing continued to be practiced in China until the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Wang Zhen (1290–1333) was one of the pioneers of wood 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.[2]

Metal movable type was first invented in Korea c. 1230 during the Goryeo period (918–1392). Hua Sui (1439–1513) introduced bronze type printing to China in 1490. The diffusion of both movable-type systems was limited and the technology did not spread beyond East and Central Asia, however.[3]

Wang Zhen

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 Chinese characters.[4] During the Ming dynasty, Ming typefaces were developed with straight and angular strokes, which made them easier to carve from woodblocks than calligraphic forms such as regular script.[5]

Movable type for Chinese characters was popularized in the mid-19th century by American missionary William Gamble, who led the American Presbyterian Mission Press (APMP) in

Heiti ("Gothic") typefaces inspired by Latin sans-serif fonts, as well as variations of the Ming typeface. Japanese typefaces influenced type design across China and Japan.[5] Also, the emergence of newspapers in the 19th century made movable type a worthwhile investment.[4]

Following the

better source needed
]

Type families

Ming

The characters 明朝体 'Ming dynasty form' set in the Zen Antique font

Ming typefaces (Mincho in Japanese; also known as Song when used with simplified Chinese[9]) are characterized by contrasting vertical and horizontal strokes. Small triangles called uroko ( 'fish scales') are nestled into the stroke, and are analogous to serifs in Latin script type.

Gothic

Round sans style typeface

East Asian Gothic typeface, known as heiti ('black form') in Chinese, are sans-serif typefaces used with 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.[10]

Fangsong

Southern Song dynasty. Fangsong is a type of regular script typeface, and the standard used in official documents produced by the Chinese government,[11] and civil drawings
in both China and Taiwan.

Kaiti

Kaiti typefaces, instead of being styled after printed regular script forms, imitate handwritten regular script.

Typographic conventions

Typographic symbols

Japanese has a set of characteristic

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 Chinese logograms to show their pronunciation.

See also

References

Citations

  1. , Bi Sheng... who first devised, about 1045, the art of printing with movable type
  2. ^ Ch'on 1993, p. 19.
  3. ^ a b c Rigaud, Émilie (2 March 2022), "Japanese Typography: Wood to Metal to Light to Vectors", Pangram Pangram Foundry, retrieved 29 August 2022
  4. ^ a b c Liu, Yuli (27 October 2022), "Deciphering the Hanzisphere", Sixth Tone, translated by Tse, Katherine, retrieved 10 March 2023
  5. ^ Norman, Jeremy M. (23 February 2023), "Missionary Printer William Gamble Introduces Electrotyping to Chinese Printing Type Production", HistoryofInformation.com, retrieved 10 March 2023
  6. ^ "Biographical Index of Missionaries — China", Presbyterian Heritage Center, 2015, retrieved 10 March 2023
  7. ^ a b Ng, Brian (6 September 2021), "Revolutionary type: Meet the designer decolonizing Chinese fonts", Rest of World, retrieved 17 September 2022
  8. ^ Lunde 2008, pp. 23–25.
  9. ^ "Understanding Japanese Typography", Humble Bunny, 22 August 2011, retrieved 29 August 2022
  10. ^ 党政机关公文格式 GB/T 9704—2012 (PDF) (in Chinese) – via 上海交通大学
  11. ^ "日本語資源", nihongoresources.com, retrieved 29 August 2022

Works cited

  • Ch'on, Hye-bong (1993), "Typography in Korea", Koreana, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 10–19

External links