![traditional chinese fonts traditional chinese fonts](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aJq9S.png)
本雜誌印法,旁行上左,並用西文句讀點之,以便插寫算術及物理化學諸程式,非故好新奇,讀者諒之。Īlthough there wasn’t a conclusive explanation (that I could find) on why Chinese script traditionally used the vertical right-to-left layout, the matter of fact is nowadays, most Chinese books use the horizontal layout. The first known publication that utilised a horizontal layout was 《科学》, a science magazine which, in its inaugural issue on January 1915, attributed the choice of horizontal layout purely for the sake of convenience of printing formulae. Nowadays, it is quite common to see Chinese texts being laid out in a typical Western horizontal layout, and read from left-to-right instead. Traditionally, Chinese characters were written from top-to-bottom, right-to-left. Regardless, Chinese script underwent thousands of years of evolution over the dynasties before maturing into the form we know and use today.īesides the characters themselves, there’s also the issue of how these characters were laid out into texts. However, given its level of sophistication, Professor Zheng Huisheng (郑慧生老师) from Henan University posited Chinese writing had its roots in an earlier form, 陶文 (script etched on ancient pottery). These characters were carved onto animal bones or turtle shells, and mainly used for divination during the Shang dynasty. 甲骨文 (Oracle bone script)Ī common misconception about the origin of Chinese writing is that 甲骨文 (literally translates to Oracle bone script) was the earliest form of Chinese characters.
![traditional chinese fonts traditional chinese fonts](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/dd/3f/73dd3fddd95ab37d3db4a97bd69fe7ab.png)
Until I researched this topic, I didn’t realise that Chinese is the only logographic writing system left that is widely used in the modern world.
![traditional chinese fonts traditional chinese fonts](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/36/48/0a/36480afbce4b0c14865ce8e404606143--crossword-puzzle.jpg)
Chinese is a logographic writing system, whereby each character itself holds meaning, whether alone or as part of a phrase. Instead, let’s talk a bit about Chinese characters.
Traditional chinese fonts series#
It warrants an encyclopaedic series of tomes. To be fair, Chinese history is too vast a subject for a blog post. The W3C Internationalization (i18n) Activity serves this purpose, to make it possible to use Web technologies with different languages, scripts and cultures. The purpose of the internet is to connect people around the world, and to do that, the Web needs to cater for the various writing systems out there. Not every writing system utilises a left-to-right, downward block flow direction that is commonly seen in Latin-based systems.įor example, Arabic-based scripts and the Hebrew alphabet are written from right-to-left with a downward block flow direction, while Han-based scripts can be written from left-to-right with a downward block flow OR from top-to-bottom with a leftward block flow direction. There are more than 6000 languages in the world today and hence many different writing systems. Some background and history (skip to next section) Writing systems
Traditional chinese fonts full#
And this got me thinking about Chinese typography on the web.Īgain, this is one of those posts that grew from a cute little cub into a full fledged Giant Panda, sooo here’s a content list. There was also an article by Ahmad Shadeed on CSS Writing Mode that was making its rounds on the interwebs.
Traditional chinese fonts plus#
Like many others with similar backgrounds, we speak both English and Chinese with native fluency, plus a smattering of other languages and dialects here and there.Ī couple of months back, I went down a rabbit hole while researching my article on CSS display and discovered the HTML ruby element.
![traditional chinese fonts traditional chinese fonts](https://pic.chinesefontdesign.com/uploads/2019/05/chinesefontdesign.com-2019-05-07-12-31-24-9.jpg)
I was born in Malaysia, then studied and now work in Singapore. If you hadn’t realised by now, I am Chinese.