Japanese Language and Computers - Direction of Text

Direction of Text

Japanese can be written in two directions. Yokogaki style writes left-to-right, top-to-bottom, as with English. Tategaki style writes first top-to-bottom, and then moves right-to-left.

At present, handling of downward text is incomplete. For example, HTML has no support for tategaki and Japanese users must use HTML tables to simulate it. However, CSS level 3 includes a property "writing-mode" which can render tategaki when given the value "tb-rl" (i.e. top to bottom, right to left). Word processors and DTP software have more complete support for it.

Read more about this topic:  Japanese Language And Computers

Famous quotes containing the words direction of, direction and/or text:

    Man alone resists the direction of gravitation: he constantly wants to fall—upwards.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    If ever I should condescend to prose,
    I’ll write poetical commandments, which
    Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those
    That went before; in these I shall enrich
    My text with many things that no one knows,
    And carry precept to the highest pitch:
    I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
    Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)