Month: February 2018

Ruby characters (ルビ rubi) are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of Chinese characters when writing languages with logographic characters such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean to show the pronunciation. Typically called just ruby or rubi, such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader.

Stroke order (simplified Chinese: 笔顺; traditional Chinese: 筆順; pinyin: bǐshùn; Yale: bāt seuhn; Japanese: 筆順 hitsujun or 書き順 kaki-jun; Korean: 필순 筆順 pilsun or 획순 劃順 hoeksun; Vietnamese: bút thuận 筆順) refers to the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and in Vietnamese. They are known as Hanzi in (Mandarin) Chinese, kanji in Japanese, Hanja in Korean, and Hán tự in Vietnamese. Stroke order is also attested in other logographic scripts, e.g. cuneiform.

Horizontal writing is known in Chinese as hengpai (simplified Chinese: 横排; traditional Chinese: 橫排; pinyin: héngpái; literally: "horizontal alignment"), in Japanese as yokogaki (横書き, "horizontal writing", also yokogumi, 横組み), and in Korean as garosseugi (가로쓰기) or hoengseo (횡서; 橫書). Vertical writing is known respectively as zongpai (simplified Chinese: 纵排; traditional Chinese: 縱排; pinyin: zōngpái; literally: "vertical alignment"), tategaki (縦書き, "vertical writing", also tategumi, 縦組み), or serosseugi (세로쓰기) or jongseo (종서; 縱書).

Furigana (振り仮名) is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller kana, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji (ideographic character) or other character to indicate its pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known as yomigana (読み仮名) or rubi (ルビ) in Japanese. In modern Japanese, it is mostly used to gloss rare kanji, to clarify rare, nonstandard or ambiguous kanji readings, or in children's or learners' materials. Before the post-World War II script reforms, it was more widespread.[1] Furigana is most often written in hiragana, though katakana, alphabet letters or other kanji can also be used in certain special cases. In vertical text, tategaki, the furigana is placed to the right of the line of text; in horizontal text, yokogaki, it is placed above the line of text.