Chinese Typography

[Jellby]

I guess a really perfectionist author/typographer would rewrite the paragraphs to avoid punctuation in problematic places. After all, in other languages, when possible, one has to rewrite things to avoid ugly hyphenations, space, rivers and stacks (I've done that myself for my thesis).

[herbalist]

[q]So... is horizontal writing with a rigid grid seen as an aesthetic positive that makes text look "old" or "classical"? Or is it seen as undesirable and simplistic to the detriment of the text?[/q]

Ahi, most of the horizontal writing are rather recent. If you want to make something look classical or old, please use traditional Chinese script and vertical layout. But if your readers are in mainland, then I guess simplified script and horizontal layout.

There's also a discussion going on regarding punctuation convention...I was educated in Hong Kong and I agree with Eric, my Chinese language teachers never told us not start a sentence with a punctuation. It wasn't a problem in formal publishing either:

see http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/8828/sample2c.jpg

This is a random page from The Eagle-shooting Heroes Vol. 1, first edition published in 1976 by Ming Pao Daily News. Louis Cha put a lot of effort and he owned Ming Pao at the time. Print quality and not in doubt.

Punctuation is a modern invention. I've never heard of it being around before the modern period. This is how Chinese use to handle punctuation:

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/4394/sample1m.jpg


Last picture is from the preface of the 17th century edition of Tao Te Ching publisehd by the Emperor. This is done using wooden movable types (they have to carve 250000 pieces) and is as lovely as it gets.

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/1...iteching01.jpg

[ericshliao]

As to the rule of puncatuation, I have an example for you to think about the difference of language in their nature. When using a typewriter to print a letter, it's inevitable that some hyphens are needed to break a long word in the end of a line. Thanks to modern font rendering technology, we don't see hyphens often now, but they do exist in books published many years ago. Can we criticize that those books are ill-formated or poorly published? Besides, in Chinese text, we don't use hyphen to break a word (glyph), because every glyph is distinct. Do you think it ridiculous when you hear people say that Chinese publication is far advanced because they don't use hyphen in the end of a line? I think the answer is quite obvious.

[lionfish]

Originally Posted by ericshliao

I have browsed several writing guides of master and doctor thesis (dissertation) specifically for Chinese, and I don't find any rule about punctuation that lionfish mentioned. So, maybe there is no such rules, not merely for "typical high school or university essay", but also for "higher" level writing.
I would assert that such rule, if there is any, must exists in professions of journalist or publication. That's not what I know of. But even if such rule does exists, I can say for sure that it's not commonly accepted.
BTW, I don't know the reason why punctuation should not start from the start of a line, both for English and for Chinese. Any explanation?

Well. You don't have to obey grammar, you don't have to spell or use punctuations correctly. You can write illegibly. You don't even have to write something meaningful at all. Those mistakes are all very common in modern publications and the publishers won't be put in jail by doing that.

"My school has never taught me", "I can't find on the Web", "Publications violating these rules do exist on my bookshelf" would never ever imply "there is no such rules".

Here is a web page from the Chinese Government. I quote the section 5 from it as follow:

5 标点符号的位置

5.1 句号、问号、叹号、逗号、顿号、分号和冒号一般占一个字的位置，居左偏下，不出现在一行之首。 

5.2 引号、括号、书名号的前一半不出现在一行之末，后一半不出现在一行之首。

5.3 破折号和省略号都占两个字的位置，中间不能断开。连接号和间隔号一般占一个字的位置。这四种符 号上下居中。

5.4 着重号、专名号和浪线式书名号标在字的下边，可以随字移行。

The following is a screen-shot captured from a Yahoo HK web page. Notice the circled positions.


Any decent web browsers, word processors, desktop publishers, presses and writers will follow these rules.

As for an explanation, if you consider a punctuation mark and the character before/after it as a unit, it will be easier to understand why these rules exist. Punctuations will never exist standalone, they are always part of a sentence or phrase. You won't accept breaking a word into two lines, right? This is also the algorithm behind word processor and why commas or periods will never start a line. Of course this is my version only, buy it or not.

[ericshliao]

Originally Posted by lionfish

Well. You don't have to obey grammar, you don't have to spell or use punctuations correctly. You can write illegibly. You don't even have to write something meaningful at all. Those mistakes are all very common in modern publications and the publishers won't be put in jail by doing that.

"My school has never taught me", "I can't find on the Web", "Publications violating these rules do exist on my bookshelf" would never ever imply "there is no such rules".
Here is a web page from the Chinese Government. I quote the section 5 from it as follow:

It's too bad that the rule applies to PRC only. They use simplified Chinese, not traditional Chinese. I don't know if you know the differences between traditional and simplified Chinese. I guess not. If you do, you will not cite rules applying to simplified Chinese only. That "Chinese government" has no power over the use of traditional Chinese.
Besides, the above article is using proportional font spacing, not monospacing.
Anyway, thanx for citing the rules of PRC. That's not what I knew of.

[lionfish]

Originally Posted by herbalist

[q]It wasn't a problem in formal publishing either:

see http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/8828/sample2c.jpg

This is a random page from The Eagle-shooting Heroes Vol. 1, first edition published in 1976 by Ming Pao Daily News. Louis Cha put a lot of effort and he owned Ming Pao at the time. Print quality and not in doubt.

I also have several of Cha's books published in 1983. It seems that that publisher accepts a combination of "：「" to start a line. But you won't find a line started with a comma, full-stop, exclamation marks, question mark or closing parenthesis and you won't find a line ended with opening parenthesis.

As for the orientation of the layout. Horizontal layout is set by the Communist party and widely adopted in Mainland China although they don't reject vertical layout completely. Horizontal layout is also more and more popular in Hong Kong (I think about 50-50) but some publishers and writers still insist using vertical layout. Some writers even stated clearly their books must adopt vertical layout.

[lionfish]

Originally Posted by ericshliao

It's too bad that the rule applies to PRC only. They use simplified Chinese, not traditional Chinese. I don't know if you know the differences between traditional and simplified Chinese. I guess not. If you do, you will not cite rules applying to simplified Chinese only. That "Chinese government" has no power over the use of traditional Chinese.
Besides, the above article is using proportional font spacing, not monospacing.
Anyway, thanx for citing the rules of PRC. That's not what I knew of.

Unfortunately, I am educated in Hong Kong also but I am not arrogant enough to reject something I don't know. Please make sure you understand the terms "proportional" and "monospacing" and the algorithm behind computer programs.

Those rules are only common sense if you do read often. Like grammar, you can always argue whether they exist. Language is not a science or Law. As I said before, you have your right not to adopt them. A law against raping doesn't mean you cannot rape.

It's pretty difficult to talk to people with no common sense and proper manner.

[ericshliao]

Originally Posted by lionfish

Unfortunately, I am educated in Hong Kong also but I am not arrogant enough to reject something I don't know. Please make sure you understand the terms "proportional" and "monospacing" and the algorithm behind computer programs.

Those rules are only common sense if you do read often. Like grammar, you can always argue whether they exist. Language is not a science or Law. As I said before, you have your right not to adopt them. A law against raping doesn't mean you cannot rape.

It's pretty difficult to talk to people with no common sense and proper manner.

I have the same feeling. After all, I will never say somebody arrogant or with no common sense or with no proper manner.

[lionfish]

Originally Posted by ericshliao

I have the same feeling. After all, I will never say somebody arrogant or with no common sense or with no proper manner.

I am sorry you have such feelings but I don't regret saying those words to you.

I will never say "there is no such rules" only if I have never taught or noticed their existence (although even a non-Chinese notices their existence and pose a question here).

I don't believe in or find or meet God doesn't mean I can say "There is no God".

I want to conclude as follows:

1. These rules was set in stone by the Mainland China (PRC) Government and all publications in Mainland China adopt them. For your interest, Singapore also follows the PRC Government and uses simplified chinese and horizontal layout.

2. These rules (better say common sense) are wildly adopted by HK and Taiwanese publishers. Nearly all the publications (except documents edited by poor word processors) I have read follow them. Many web browsers and word processors also follow them. So in reality, many, if not all, people living in HK and Taiwan area do adopt them. Neither do I create these rules nor it's my imagination.

3. Language is not science or law, it's more of a living subject. Not many governments on this planet will set strict rules for their languages (although most of them will encourage certain rules or grammar). So anybody, including Eric and Ahi, are free not to obey any of these "rules".

[lionfish]

double post

[ericshliao]

Originally Posted by lionfish

I am sorry you have such feelings but I don't regret saying those words to you.

I will never say "there is no such rules" only if I have never taught or noticed their existence (although even a non-Chinese notices their existence and pose a question here).

If you said those words because you think that I denied the existence of such rules, then you should regret that you have said those bad words, because I have never said "thiere is no such rules". In fact, I only said that "I will never say there is no such rules" or something like this. If you read more carefully, you'll find it here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...6&postcount=35. Besides, even if I deny the existence, whether reasonablly or not, it's not a execuse to say those bad words.

[Jellby]

In this PDF (zhspacing for XeTeX) it seems grid typesetting is simply ignored (see the bottom of page 4). It says it's "proper typesetting" and it's written by a Chinese (or so it seems), but of course, I can't comment on the validity of this.

Then, according to this page:

There are no spaces between words in typeset Chinese, and all characters are as wide, including punctuation, brackets etc. A word consisting of several characters may be divided at any point, so a column in Chinese is naturally justified at both edges. It often happens that a punctuation character drops alone to the beginning of a line, which looks bad. This can be corrected by increasing the character spacing of the previous line, or by re-formulating the language.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ericshliao

As to the rule of puncatuation, I have an example for you to think about the difference of language in their nature. When using a typewriter to print a letter, it's inevitable that some hyphens are needed to break a long word in the end of a line. Thanks to modern font rendering technology, we don't see hyphens often now, but they do exist in books published many years ago.

Another reason for that is that most 19th century novels were originally published in weekly or monthly magazines, and printed in narrow magazine columns, which inevitably resulted in a great many hyphenated words, which were retained even when the work was subsequenty reprinted as a book.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by lionfish

Although LRF/LRS is designed by Japanese, they didn't include such rules when rendering Japanese/Chinese text.

The format does not specify rendering rules. I think (though not 100% sure) that Librie's renderer probably did obey some typesetting rules (it could also render ruby), but it was rewritten for PRS-500 (and later) and CJK rendering was not the main point there.

[herbalist]

Originally Posted by lionfish

I also have several of Cha's books published in 1983. It seems that that publisher accepts a combination of "：「" to start a line. But you won't find a line started with a comma, full-stop, exclamation marks, question mark or closing parenthesis and you won't find a line ended with opening parenthesis.

As for the orientation of the layout. Horizontal layout is set by the Communist party and widely adopted in Mainland China although they don't reject vertical layout completely. Horizontal layout is also more and more popular in Hong Kong (I think about 50-50) but some publishers and writers still insist using vertical layout. Some writers even stated clearly their books must adopt vertical layout.

Well, is your copy of Louis Cha’s novel layout in a grid? Or is the spacing between the characters adjusted ever so imperceptably?


So the Chinese government actually promulgated a set of rules regarding published books in mainland China? That’s a law, not grammatical rules. In Hong Kong, we used to write our essays on grid papers, if starting the next line is a “,” or a “:”, I will put in the punctuation mark and not omit a space or two just to make sure that comma or colon does not occupy the start of a line. If however, I’ve forgotten to use the squiggly to underline book names or start a new paragraph, I would not be punctuating correctly. If I publish a book in China without following their rules, I probably ran afoul of their law but I still haven't committed any grammatical errors.