uk-netmarketing Archive (2011-2015)

Hiya,

On 30 Jan 2012, at 11:08, Ty-John Roberts wrote:
[snip]
> A client's Japanese language site : 
> 
> The font used across the website is, in their words. ‘Chinese Japanese’. By this, they mean the characters are not as clear as they should be, ultimately impacting on the delivery of the copy.
> 
> I've looked into this and the site is set up using UTF-8 which should display the text correctly, however the client maintains this is not the answer. 

If it's the issue I'm thinking of it's related to font selection, not UTF-8.

There are several different kinds of ideographic character shapes in asia. Some fonts cover all of them and it will be legible, to make different characters in different languages appear distinct they can look "odd" to readers of one particular style.

You can think of it as a similar issue to the way that fonts aimed at developers often add a decoration to the numeral zero to keep it distinct from an upper case "O" - but the changes can be more extreme and distracting.

You can get over it by using a font designed for a Japanese audience in particular.

Cheers,

Adrian
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