GuideMar 4, 20265 min read

CJK typography in screenshots

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean each break Latin layout in their own way. Density, line height, punctuation, and hangul.

CJK stands for Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Each language renders very differently from Latin, and naive layout breaks in predictable ways.

Density and breaks

CJK characters carry a full word per glyph. A four-character Japanese title can mean what takes ten English words. Lines break between any characters, not on spaces. A simple "wrap on space" algorithm produces lines that end mid-word.

Font choice

Use a font designed for the language. Noto Sans CJK is the safe default, with separate weights for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Mixing the wrong variant gives subtle but noticeable wrong glyphs.

Line height

CJK glyphs are tall. A line-height that works for Latin produces overlapping lines in Chinese. Add 10–20% to the line-height value for CJK locales.

Punctuation

Periods and commas are different glyphs in CJK ("。" "、" not "." ","). Auto-translation that copies Latin punctuation looks wrong. Most translation models get this right; double-check anyway.

Hangul has its own rules

Korean uses syllable blocks. Spacing between blocks affects readability. A monospaced or "shrink-to-fit" approach often produces unreadable Korean. Allow the line to wrap naturally instead.

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Written by Yassine

Indie dev. Built lokal because translating App Store screenshots by hand was eating my launches. Reach out at hi@lokall.app.

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