Formatting CJK characters

In traditional typesetting technology, characters were slanted by using a lens to distort the glyphs when being set on film. This oblique style is known as shatai. Shatai is distinct from a simple slant of the glyphs, because it also scales the glyphs. You can adjust the magnification or angle of text you want to slant from the center point, without changing the height of the glyph, using the shatai feature in InDesign.

Rotate characters

Adjust aki before and after characters

For example, if you specify 2bu, half a full-width space is added, and if you specify 4bu, a quarter of a full-width space is added. This aki will not be adjusted when the line is set to full justification. Adjusting aki is especially useful to override Mojikumi Akiryo Settings for certain characters.

Use tate-chu-yoko

Using tate-chu-yoko (also known as kumimoji or renmoji) is an option to make a part of the text horizontal, in vertical text. It is easier to read half-width characters such as numbers, dates, and short foreign words in a vertical text frame, by rotating the text.

You can move text left, right, up, and down when you turn on the Tate-chu-yoko option. You can also set Auto Tate-chu-yoko for special half-width characters. Auto Tate-chu-yoko is set in the paragraph attributes.

Apply tate-chu-yoko

Remove tate-chu-yoko

Change tate-chu-yoko settings

Set Auto Tate-chu-yoko for specific paragraphs

Add Ruby to text

In Japanese, Ruby (also known as furigana) is normally used to show the kanji yomi in hiragana. In Simplified Chinese, Ruby is called Pinyin, while in Traditional Chinese, Ruby is called Chuyin. InDesign provides full support to Japanese Ruby and limited support to Chinese Pinyin or Chuyin. You can adjust Ruby settings to specify Ruby location, size, or color. Furthermore, when the ruby is longer than the parent you can specify the ruby distribution. You can also apply tate-chu-yoko to Ruby.

When the parent to which you want to attach ruby covers two lines, the ruby will follow when the parent moves to the next line.

Ruby settings

The following options appear in the different panels of the Ruby dialog box.

Ruby Placement and Spacing

• From the Type menu, choose Per-Character or Group Ruby. When Per Character Ruby is selected, enter a half or full width space when inputting Ruby characters to separate them in line with their parent characters. For "hakunetsutou" for example, enter as "haku netsu tou" (example of a word composed of Japanese characters and its phonetic spelling is given).

• From the Alignment menu, specify the position of the Ruby characters. You can check the position with the graphic shown in the sample field.

• To attach ruby above horizontal text or to the right of vertical text, select Above/Right, and to attach below horizontal text or to the left of vertical text, select Below/Left in Placement.

• Specify the spacing between the ruby and the parent in XOffset and YOffset. When you enter a minus value, the ruby moves closer to the parent.

Ruby Font and Size

• Select a font family and font style in Font.

• Specify the size of the ruby characters in Size. The default ruby size is half the size of the parent.

• Specify the scale for the height and width of the ruby characters in Horizontal Scale and Vertical Scale.

• Select Use Open Type Pro Ruby Glyphs to use alternate glyphs for ruby (when possible). Specific kana characters are available for some Open Type Pro fonts. When you select this option, the specific font for ruby characters, and not the standard kana font, will be used.

• In KumiNumber, specify the number of successive half-width characters that you want to rotate to vertical orientation. For example, if this is set to 2, the character string "123" will not rotate, while "12" will.

• Select Include Roman Characters to apply tate-chu-yoko to roman text.

• Select Scale to Fit to force the tate-chu-yoko to have the same dimensions (1 em x 1 em) in the ruby string, either using an OpenType feature or scaling the glyphs.

Adjustment When Ruby Is Longer Than Parent

• With Overhang, when the total Ruby width is greater than that of their parent characters, the specified Ruby will overflow widthways into the space above characters either side of the parents. For Japanese, character types compatible with Overhang comply with the JISx4051‑1995 specification.

• Specify the parent character spacing necessary for attaching ruby in Spacing. When you select a different option, the graphics displayed in the sample field are updated.

• To automatically adjust the ruby character width, select Char Width Scaling, and specify the compression scale for the width of the ruby characters.

• Select Auto Align at Line Edges to align the parent with the start and end of the line.

Ruby Color

• Select a color swatch in the list box.

• Specify the degree of tinting and line weight, as necessary.

• Select Overprint Fill or Overprint Stroke to set filling or stroke overprint for ruby characters.

  (See Determining when to overprint manually.)

Apply kenten

Kenten (also known as Boten) are points which you attach to text you want to highlight. You can select the type of points from existing kenten forms, or specify customized kenten characters. You can also specify the position, scale, and color by adjusting the kenten settings.

Apply kenten

Change kenten settings and color

Align text of different sizes

You can specify how to align text to the largest characters in a line using the Character Alignment option, when positioning characters of different sizes in 1 line. It is possible to align characters to the top, center or bottom of the embox (right, center, and left for vertical frames), to the roman baseline, and to the top or bottom of the ICF box (right or left for vertical frames). ICF (Ideographic Character Face) is the average height and width used by the font designer to design the ideographic characters which comprise a font.