CJK Fonts: Glossary of Terms

Alphabet
A limited collection of symbols used to represent in writing the sounds of a particular language or group of languages.

Big 5
A de facto, Taiwanese character set used for Traditional Chinese.

Byte
See octet.

Character
A unique symbol of a writing system such as an alphabet. For instance, 'b' is the second character of the English alphabet.

Character set
A well-defined group of symbols typically used for the support of one or more languages. In a 'coded' character set, each character is assigned to a specific numbered slot within the whole set. A 'non-coded' character set is an unordered group of characters (see also character collection).

Character collection
A well-defined group of characters whose order (or, encoding) has not been fixed. The term is usually interchangeable with 'non-coded character set'.

CID format
A Postscript-based font format which can support a large number (max 65,536) of characters.

CJK
A collective term referring to the common features of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems.

Code page
A system vendor's implementation of a character set. Often abbreviated as 'CP'. For example, Code page 1252 (or, CP1252) is Microsoft’s implementation (and extension) of the standard character set ISO 8859-1 (also known as Latin-1).

Double byte
'Double byte' is usually used in reference to a character set which supports more than 256 characters. Consisting of 16 bits, two bytes (or, octets) can support numbers ranging from 0 (zero) to 65,535, i.e. 65,536 unique numeric values. See also double-byte language.

Double-byte language
Although technically inaccurate and outdated, the term is often used to refer to East Asian languages with large character sets such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Encoding
In the context of fonts and character sets, the term refers to the specific ordering (sequencing) of the components of a character set or character collection.

Gaiji characters
In general, the term can be used for any symbols not supported by a particular Japanese character set. However, most often the term is used in reference to kanji characters.

GBK
A standard character set used in the People’s Republic of China which includes all (approx 20,000) the ideographic characters in the Unified CJK range of Unicode.

Gothic
A common style in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts which is considered stylistically similar to sans-serif fonts such as Arial.

Han characters
The characters of the Chinese writing system whose origin is directly traceable to pictographic symbols. Also known as ideographs.

Hangul
The syllabary (or, syllabic alphabet) used to write the Korean language.

Hanja
The Korean name for Chinese characters.

Hanzi
The Mandarin Chinese name for Chinese characters.

Hei
The common Chinese name for Gothic style.

Hiragana
One of the syllabic alphabets used in writing Japanese. Hiragana is most commonly used for the variable grammatical elements in Japanese sentences, as well as for words which have no kanji symbols. See also katakana and kana.

Horizontal writing
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean can be written from left to right in horizontal lines in a manner similar to languages written in the Latin alphabet. However, these languages have traditionally been written in vertical columns (see vertical writing).

Ideograph
See ideographic character.

Ideographic
Referring to ideographic characters such as those of Chinese.

Ideographic character
The non-alphabetic characters of the Chinese writing system whose origin is directly traceable to pictographic symbols. See also han characters.

Kana
The collective name for the two syllabic alphabets (hiragana & katakana) used in writing Japanese.

Kanji
The Japanese name for Chinese characters. Also written as 'kanzi'.

Katakana
One of the syllabic alphabets used in writing Japanese. Katakana is most commonly used for foreign words and names. See also hiragana and kana.

Logogram
See ideographic character.

Mincho
A common style in Japanese fonts which is considered stylistically similar to serif fonts such as Times New Roman.

Myeongjo
A common style in Korean fonts which is considered stylistically similar to serif fonts such as Times New Roman.

Octet
Also known as a byte, an octet consists of 8 bits, and can represent numeric values ranging from 0 (zero) to 255. See also single byte.

Radical
The smallest meaningful components out of which an ideographic character is built.

Romaji
The Latin alphabet as used in the context of Japanese writing.

Shift JIS
A common Japanese character set consisting of around 7000 characters.

Simplified Chinese
The Chinese ideographic writing system as used in the People’s Republic of China and Singapore.

Script
A set of symbols used in writing one or more languages. The alphabet, syllabary, and ideographs, are among the most common types of scripts.

Single byte
'Single byte' is usually used in reference to a character set which supports a maximum of 256 characters. Consisting of 8 bits, one byte (or, octet) can support numbers ranging from 0 (zero) to 255, i.e. 256 unique numeric values. See also single-byte language.

Single-byte language
Although technically inaccurate and outdated, the term is often used to refer to languages with relatively small character sets, and in contrast to the East Asian languages with large character sets.

Sung
A common style in Chinese fonts which is considered stylistically similar to serif fonts such as Times New Roman.

Syllabary
See syllabic alphabet.

Syllabic alphabet
An alphabet whose symbols primarily represent consonant-vowel pairs such as ‘ba’, ‘fi’, ‘no’, ‘ku’, ‘po’, etc. Examples of syllabic alphabets are hiragana, katakana, and hangul.

Traditional Chinese
The Chinese ideographic writing system as used primarily in Taiwain and Hong Kong.

TrueType collection
Also known as a TTC, a 'bundling' of TrueType fonts which allows them to share common parts without duplication in order to save space. For instance, several Japanese fonts in a TTC may share a common set of kanji characters.

TrueType font
A font in TrueType format.

TrueType format
Originally devised by Apple Computers and later extended by Microsoft, TrueType is a font format which can support a large number (max 65,536) of characters.

TTC
See TrueType collection.

TTF
See TrueType font.

Unicode
A universal, 16-bit, standard coded character set for the representation of all human scripts. Currently, Unicode is at its third major version (3.0). For further details, see the Web site of the Unicode Consortium at unicode.org.

Unicode character
Referring to one of the characters defined in the Unicode Standard. The term is sometimes used to refer to the numeric value representing a particular character.

Unicode encoding
See Unicode order.

Unicode order
Referring to a set of characters sequentially arranged in compliance with the Unicode Standard.

Unicode Standard
See Unicode.

Unicode value
Referring to an integer value which lies in the range declared permissible by the Unicode Standard.

Unified CJK
As defined in the Unicode Standard, a range of 20,902 ideographic characters shared by Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Unified Han
See Unified CJK.

Vertical form
Certain symbols take on a distinct form when written in a vertical direction (see also horizontal & vertical writing).

Vertical writing
In contrast to languages written in the Latin alphabet, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are often written in vertical columns, proceeding from right to left on the page. See also horizontal writing.

Writing system
A strictly regulated method of writing a particular language using one or more scripts. For instance, English is written in the Latin (or Roman) alphabet according to a series of rules. Japanese is written using a combination of 4 scripts: the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, kanji symbols, in addition to romaji (Latin).

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