East Asian gothic typeface

A passage from the Thousand Character Classic in sans-serif typeface. The rightmost line is the original Chinese. The middle and the left lines are transliterations in Japanese kana and Korean Hangul, respectively.

Gothic typefaces (simplified Chinese: 黑体; traditional Chinese: 黑體; pinyin: hēitǐ; Japanese: ゴシック体 goshikku-tai; Korean: 돋움 dotum, 고딕체 godik-che) are a type style characterised by strokes of even thickness, reduced curves, and lack of decorations, akin to sans serif styles in Western typography. It is the second most commonly used style in East Asian typography, after Ming.

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

Round sans style typeface

Sans-serif typefaces in computing

In Japanese computing, the use of sans-serif typefaces is common, with a number of default system fonts being sans-serif. Also, many Korean 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 are seriffed (MingLiU and SimSun), which is inconsistent with the sans-serif styling use in most other (including East Asian) regions of the product. Starting in Windows Vista, the default interface typefaces in all regions were changed to sans-serif styles, using Microsoft JhengHei in Traditional Chinese environments and Microsoft YaHei in Simplified Chinese environments.

See also

External links

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