Talk about Chinese and English typesetting

Because the Chinese box composition in the arrangement has the very good elasticity, therefore either the straight book or the horizontal writing direction all may very well adapt. In modern times, in order to promote computerization, so that the text and information to bring universal, horizontal writing layout is widely used. But in fact, in many occasions, such as the more emphasis on Chinese text expression of books, will still use direct writing to do typesetting, reading has a completely different reading experience:

A straight book is a big difference from a cross book.

The use of direct writing in Chinese characters, in fact, there are many sayings, one of the most common explanation is from the development of bamboo slips. In the case of right-handed children with a proportion of the majority, when writing bamboo slips, the left hand holds Jane and the right hand is written. In writing, the direction of the holding of bamboo slips and the direction of writing naturally developed a straight book to write, until later, although the writing has evolved into paper, but the writing habit of straight books has been followed down.

The use of straight books in Chinese or horizontal books is good, in fact, there are many support opinions. As far as writing is concerned, in fact, when writing the general size of a word, the fluency of direct book writing is better than the horizontal book, this is because we in writing, the elbow as the support to do the writing, in the horizontal writing, easy because of the rotation of the elbows of the relationship between the more and more move upward and lead to skew. While the straight writing, is the whole arm telescopic, to complete the writing of straight book movements, do not appear elbow rotation movement, writing easier to maintain the correct sense of the line sentence.

The difference in reading, in fact, there are more different views discussed, some people think that straight books to read more smoothly, others feel that the horizontal book is suitable for the eyes of the rapid scanning text direction, more suitable for fast reading, this part although because of personal feelings and different, But in fact, most people can easily adapt to the straight book and the reading style of the book.

The question of the direction of the text

Since the use of straight books, it will involve a use of the book will not encounter problems: "In the end the second line should be written on the left side of the first line, or the right?" We already know that the Chinese language direction is from right to left, a similar interpretation of bamboo slips is this: may be because of the use of the right hand to write and left holding a bamboo film, when to replace a piece of bamboo slips (line), the left hand will naturally be placed in the first line of bamboo on the left, and then develop the habit.

But the development of paper writing, from the right to the left side of the direction of the text appeared obvious shortcomings, such as the right hand to write words, it is easy to be hand block the previous written text (this everyone should have met). As well as in fact, the writing style of strokes, roughly also from the top down, from left to right writing direction, the writing style and article paragraph arrangement of different ways, how much is a bit of a sense of contradictions exist. From this perspective, the direction from left to right seems more appropriate to the logical.

Writing here, I do not know whether you remember the previous example: the Chinese traditional plaque, the horizontal abbreviation on the Spring Festival couplets, in fact, is a line of direct writing, so the direction of writing is also written from right to left, but this situation in the current typographic printing is completely the opposite, such as we read daily newspaper magazine, Clearly using the Chinese traditional straight book, from right to left direction, but the title part of the text in turn to use from left to right of the horizontal book to write, seems to be a little strange thing.

Because the direction of reading from left to right is the change of the popularization of Chinese characters in modern times, so many small stories have been circulated, such as the "pandas" in the Chongqing Beibei Museum in 1940. Since many Chinese users have been accustomed to the Chinese reading method left to right, they have been misunderstood as "pandas", and "pandas" and "pandas" together become the names of such animals. The related story also is "Chinese steel" into "Iron steel country" and so on.

And the traditional calligraphy on the text of a considerable emphasis on the relationship between words and words, in the professional terms called "line Qi", especially the writing and cursive script. The Qing Dynasty calligrapher Song Caozen in "calligraphy Engagement" book mentions:"do not reciprocate, at first break complex Lian, bearing on birth, love son Guyu. "meaning is written should not only focus on the text itself, but also must take into account between the word, line and line between the overall sense of the general requirements of the pen broken meaning, linked to row, accumulate line into the article." This is one of the important reasons why calligraphy cannot be easily substituted for straight books.

The cooperation between Chinese straight book and Latin writing

Today we most often encounter the situation of direct writing, may be the use of straight envelopes of the occasion, first of all, we look at the Chinese postal site provided by the direct envelope writing example:

Photo: China postal mail Direct envelope writing method

We can find that the direct envelope planning is actually the direction of reading from right to left: first read the rightmost address information, and then to the left to read the recipient's name and address, the last is the sender information.

And one of the interesting things we find in this writing paradigm is the application of straight books in Chinese and Arabic numerals.

Although today we have been widely used in the use of Arabic numerals, Arabic numerals in the Year 13 to 14th century, that is, the Yuan Dynasty when the introduction of China, but not universally used. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that the introduction of Western mathematical knowledge was gradually popularized.

In fact, Chinese is not the existence of a number, and even have different ways of writing: usually written in Chinese numerals such as "0, one or two, three, four or five ... and the so-called Chinese capital number" 0, one, ii, ginseng, restaurant, Wu ... ". The former is more common, and capital figures because of the more cumbersome relationship between strokes, it is more difficult to alter the false, so in financial institutions and other occasions will require the use of capital Chinese numerals.

This is worth mentioning is that "0" is actually a letter of Chinese characters, although so, "0" does not have any character of the straight book horizontal strokes. The word we most commonly use is used to denote the age, such as "2013," so the word is used in a lot of Chinese books, including the straight envelope Writing example we just saw (albeit as an alternative font size). Interestingly, the compendium of the Chinese Language Dictionary of the Ministry of Education does not include "0" entries, but in the "0" this article lightly wrote the "Zero for the"0"" explanation, in the paper in the Mandarin Dictionary also appeared several times this word.

Even so, now many people do not know how to enter the word, they use the "0" of Arabic numerals or English capital "o" to replace. In fact, some phonetic input method, as long as the "0" pronunciation can be found in the Word table "0" the word.

Note: At present, there are confirmed OS X built-in phonetic input method, Yahoo phonetic input method, and the traditional phonetic notation of Windows version and new phonetic notation are not included in this pronunciation, but can use the input method integrator to write "0" in handwritten way.

So there are a number of occasions in Chinese, the use of direct writing will have a variety of different writing conditions:

Because modern Chinese is quite flexible in its use, usually the number and ordinal can be must have plotted, such as "40" and "40", can be thought to represent the number of 40, but if the writing "404" and "44" light on the number is different value, be sure to use the attention.

In the case of Chinese and English collocation, because English has only one writing direction, an uncertain whether the formal wording is the English letter one by one to take apart to arrange, this more appears in all capitals abbreviation usage. And the other way is to rotate the writing direction 90 degrees to write, is a more eclectic solution.

What if the writing situation is a more complicated English word?

Chinese characters are based on a single word, and English is the basic unit of words, and English is hard to disassemble into straight writing because each English word has a different length. If you write straight words in the basic unit of the word, the situation will be as follows:

It is obvious that when you encounter a longer word, it will affect the smoothness of your reading. But in fact, the English word is composed of the root, whether it is possible to consider the writing of English articles, if you encounter the necessary circumstances will use hyphens to split the word to assign to the next line, in this way a word in the way of Shang root processing it: ( The author will not tear down the word root of these words, so to indicate.

Although the problem may be solved too long, but completely lost the reading, this side of course is the experimental dismantling of the action, and no practical value in.

The actual application of the surface of the situation

We have just had a discussion in the context of writing and reading. But computer and typesetting systems are still the product of Western Latin writing systems. In practical applications or more will be limited by software and platform limitations of the feasibility, for example, the Web page can be said to be completely without the processing of direct-book tools can be used (CSS in some of the widely supported syntax is not discussed first), in the face of this situation there are certainly some eclectic way to deal with it, One is through the break and left way to do the processing:

Middle Make Venzo Straight to break Book Dakhong Generating to Case of and

But because after all, is in the horizontal book system to make the speculative typesetting method, in addition to write very troublesome, not only the word distance is limited by the page spacing, there is no formal direct book spacing, so this method is not commonly used.

A more common, more insurance approach is to use the Map file processing, the designer only need to complete the layout of the direct book in the graphics typesetting software, you can easily complete the task, but also not by the Web page Chinese font is poor, naturally quite popular. However, no matter which method of processing, for all the information in the Web page to find and deal with.

Of course, people who love straight book typesetting have also made a number of conversion tools for everyone to see, like this "bamboo to take the Web JS version" can be real-time page into a straight book format, so that straight book lovers to enjoy the use of direct book browsing the fun of the web, the following is "Let us find fault: The optimization of Chinese and English mixed in the State" Use the tool to convert to the results of a straight arrangement:

Relative to the inconvenience of the Web page, in typesetting and clerical software in the situation is a lot of freedom, do not need to consider compatibility and other complex issues, the software only need to provide the corresponding function can be. such as the commonly used typesetting software such as Illustrator and InDesign directly provides the vertical direction of the Text tool:

And the clerical software such as Word of course also provides a powerful function to meet the needs of the vast number of Chinese document editing

After the whole document is converted into a horizontal direction format, the English part needs to be used only through the conversion of full angle and half angle to meet different typesetting requirements. Also provides the need to convert English words to horizontal.

The written order of the

Chinese and English, due to the different writing tools used and the development of the characters, leads to different writing styles and habits, and no right or wrong points. And the need for the transfer of cultural exchanges between China and the West has been a problem that has never been thought of before. From the Chinese point of view, from the left and right to write text, it is indeed more convenient, there will be no arms stained ink trouble. And the horizontal way of writing can also be more closely with the English text mix typesetting. But straight books have always been a feature of the development and retention of Chinese characters, like the newspaper in the text has been maintaining the direction of direct typesetting, we will not be reading when the situation can not be read, perhaps through direct writing, only to make people more "reading Chinese" feeling it.