CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

484

|

Chapter 7: Typography

Character grid exampleTable 7-6.

Glyph string

Vertical Character Variants

While the majority of characters appear the same regardless of writing direction, some

characters, due to their orientation or position within the design space, must somehow

change to accommodate dierent writing directions.

Table 7-7 illustrates how the glyphs for some characters change their orientation or posi-

tioning within their design space depending on whether they are being set horizontally or

vertically. ese glyphs’ design spaces have been highlighted through the use of registra-

tion marks for much easier comparison, and to better understand the relative position of

the glyphs in their design space. Additionally, there are some glyphs that must undergo

more than one transformation in order to change from the horizontal form to its ap-

propriate vertical form. Consider the glyphs for the following two characters: ⌍⌌ (a wave

or swung dash) and ⌍⌌ (long vowel mark, Japanese-specic). e corresponding vertical

forms of these characters are ⌍󰗗⌌ and ⌍󰗔⌌ , respectively. Note how these two characters are

rotated 90˚ and ipped in order to become the proper vertical variants. Some font de-

velopers oen forget to ip the glyphs for these characters when creating their vertical

variants—it is a very easy mistake to make, unfortunately.

Sample characters that require special vertical ...