Vertical writing mode

Also called tategaki, vertical typesetting, writing-mode

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

Setting text in columns running top to bottom, columns ordered right to left — the traditional mode for Japanese and Chinese, and current in books, newspapers and signage. CSS supports it via writing-mode: vertical-rl, with text-orientation governing whether Latin runs rotate or stand upright, and tate-chu-yoko setting short numbers horizontally within the column.

The same Japanese passage set twice. First in horizontal lines read top to bottom; then in columns running top to bottom and ordered right to left, where the opening bracket has changed to its vertical form, the comma has moved to the top right of its cell, and a two-digit year sits upright and horizontal within the column.

In practice

Not a rotation of the horizontal setting. Punctuation moves, brackets change glyph, and every logical property — inline-size, margin-block, padding-inline — starts earning its keep over width and margin-top.

Not to be confused with

CJKChinese, Japanese and Korean typesetting. Characters occupy a fixed em square, so text sets to an even grid; there are no word spaces, so lines may break almost anywhere; and a usable font runs to tens of thousands of glyphs, which makes it megabytes and makes unicode-range subsetting mandatory rather than an optimisation.

How this term connects

Related Confused with

In practice

Not to be confused with

Related

How this term connects

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