1.3. KANJI 17
real exclamation.
Finally, not quite interpunction but important nonetheless are the
two ways to emphasise parts of wriĴen language in the same way we use
bold or underlining in western composition: doĴing and lining. In hori-
zontal writing, words will have dots over each syllable or kanji, or a line
over the entire emphasised section. In vertical writing, the dots and lining
is placed on the right side of text.
In addition to knowing the basics about which symbols can be used,
Japanese (as well as some other Asian languages such as Chinese) has the
unique problem of deciding in which direction to write. For all its mod-
ernising, some things such as writing remain unchanged. As such, for the
most part printed Japanese (as well as handwriĴen material) is wriĴen top
down, right to left. In contrast, most Japanese material on the internet is
typically wriĴen in a western fashion, with the text running left to right,
top to boĴom.
To make maĴers more interesting, in recent history, Japanese could
also be wriĴen horizontally right-to-left. This practice has preĴy much
disappeared except in shipping (ship names may still be wriĴen in this
way) and for ’older style’ shop signs. You will not encounter full texts
wriĴen in this way in modern or even just post-meiji older Japanese.
There are a few differences between horizontal and vertical writing,
most notably in terms of where to place half size characters and interpunc-
tion:
horizontal vertical
half size characters half-height half-width, right aligned
full stop, comma lower left: [ ], [ ] upper-right: [ ], [ ]
opening quotes corner in the upper left ( ) corner in the upper right ( )
closing quotes corner in the lower right ( ) corner in the lower left ( )
parentheses left and right: i.e. ( and ) above and below: i.e. and
doĴing above characters to the right of characters
lining above characters to the right of characters
drawn sound, hyphen horizontal ( , ―) vertical (︴, )1.3 Kanji
One of wriĴen Japanese’s most well-known features is that it comprises
three writing systems: the two kana scripts, and a third script called kanji,