East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

n writing systems, gothic typefaces (; ; , ''godik-che'') are a type style characterized by strokes of even thickness and lack of decorations, akin to

sans serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

styles in Western

typography Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

. It is the second most commonly used style in

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

, after

Ming The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, t ...

History

Gothic typefaces were first developed in Japan. Starting in the 1960s, the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

's Shanghai Printing Technology and Research Institute developed new typefaces for

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one that is simpler (usually shorter), according to a well-founded ordering. Examples include: ...

, including gothic typefaces. The communist government favored gothic typefaces because they were plain and "represented a break with the past."

Characteristics

Similar to Ming and Song typefaces, sans-serif typefaces were designed for printing, but they were also designed for legibility. They are commonly used in headlines, signs, and video applications.

Classifications

* Square sans (Japanese: ''kaku goshikku''; ), the classic sans-serif style in which the lines of the characters have squared ends. ** Overlapping square sans () - This style is similar to the square sans, but in places where strokes overlap, a margin is inserted between the strokes to distinguish the strokes. ** Square new book () - Uses narrow horizontal and thick vertical strokes, similar to typefaces such as

Optima Optima is a Humanist sans-serif, humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958. Though classified as a sans-serif, Optima has a subtle swelling at the terminals s ...

. * Round sans (Japanese: ''maru goshikku'', , Korean: ''gullimche''), has rounded ends and corners to the lines of the characters. In some cases, short protruding stroke ends at intersections are eliminated to make glyphs look rounder. This is the style of typeface used for Japanese road signs. ** Overlapping round sans () - This is similar to the round sans, but in places where strokes overlap, a margin is inserted between the strokes to distinguish the strokes. ** Rounded new book () - Uses narrow horizontal and thick vertical strokes, along with rounded line ends and corners. * Mixed art () - Curved strokes are replaced by angled strokes with sharp or round corners.

Sans-serif typefaces in computing

Sans serif typefaces, especially for default system fonts, are common in Japanese computing. Also, many

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

n computing environments use Gulim which includes soft curves but is a sans-serif typeface. In Chinese, versions of Microsoft Windows XP and older, the default interface typefaces have serifs (MingLiU and SimSun), which deviates from the sans serif styling use in most other (including East Asian) regions of the product. Starting in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, the default interface typefaces in all regions were changed to sans-serif styles, using

Microsoft JhengHei Microsoft JhengHei (微軟正黑體) is a sans-serif typeface included in Windows Vista or later and Microsoft Office 2007. It follows the Standard Form of National Characters prescribed by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China (Taiwan ...

in Traditional Chinese environments and

Microsoft YaHei Microsoft YaHei () is a sans-serif East Asian gothic typeface, gothic typeface created by Founder Electronics and Monotype Corporation under commission from Microsoft. Hinting for the font was undertaken by Monotype Imaging. The CJK ideographic cha ...

in Simplified Chinese environments.

References

External links