Type in China, Japan, and Korea
CJK is an acronym for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scripts. These articles cover the characteristics and how to set type in each. Latin classifications (serif, humanist, geometric, etc.) do not apply directly: In Japan, “Mincho” is similar to serif, while in Korea, it’s “Myeongjo;” “Gothic” is used for sans serif in both Japanese and Korean. In China, serif-like designs are “Song Ti (宋体),” or sometimes “Mingchao Ti” or “Ming Ti (明朝体 or 明体),” to go together with the Japanese and Korean names. The sans are called “Hei Ti (黑体).” All CJK fonts also have a miscellaneous display classification: In Japan and Korea, it’s “design fonts” and in China, “decorative” fonts.
Filter lessons by topic
Type classification in CJK: Chinese
Type classification in CJK: Japanese
Type classification in CJK: Korean
CJK Typesetting Rules
Japanese typography basics
The evolution of Hangeul type design
Em
A unit of measurement, 1em is equal to the size of a font. Adjusting font size will resize glyphs relative to the em square.
Weight axis (wght)
An axis found in some variable fonts that controls the font file’s weight parameter.
Optical sizes
Different versions of a typeface optimized for use at specific sizes or size ranges.
Typeface
A typeface is what you see; a font is what you use.
X-height
The height of the lowercase characters that have no ascenders nor descenders, which indicates how tall or short the type appears.
Contrast
The difference between the thick and thin parts of a stroke. A monolinear typeface has low stroke contrast, and is the opposite of a high contrast face.