In both mainland China and Taiwan, the printed forms of Chinese characters have been standardized to align with handwritten ones. These standardized forms are commonly referred to as “New Character Glyphs” (新字形), and are used for both simplified and traditional characters. In mainland China, the first New Character Glyph standard dates back to the List of Printed Common Characters (印刷通用漢字字形表) published in 1965. Separately in Taiwan, the List of Common Standard National Characters (常用國字標準字體表) was published in 1982. These standards have been criticized for inhibiting the beauty of Chinese type by “treating handwriting as print’s mother,” and forcibly imposing upon established Chinese type conventions.
On the other hand, “Inherited Glyphs (傳承字形),” or “Inherited Print Glyphs (傳承印刷字形)” (commonly referred to as “Old Glyphs (舊字形)”) are printed forms that have not been altered to conform with handwriting. These forms can be found in authoritative academic standards such as Kangxi Dictionary, Shuowen, Cihai, and Daikanwa. These well-balanced forms provide the best of both worlds, both better reflecting etymology and better suiting typesetting needs. Despite mainland China having a law regulating standard spoken and written language which enforces New Character Glyphs, there are quite a number of Inherited Glyph enthusiasts in the region. In Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities, Inherited Glyphs are also found in many publications, billboards, and road signs. Inherited Glyphs are found everywhere in daily life, as common as light and water.
Regrettably, authorities present their modified glyphs as the sole “standard,” turning a blind eye toward Inherited Glyphs. Some people uneducated in grammatology even state a belief that Inherited Glyphs “have no standard,” and maintain that computer operating systems have no need to support Inherited Glyphs. They don’t know, or dismiss the fact that past scholars published diligently standardized Inherited Glyph specimens, disregarding the efforts of academics past and present.
Technology serves people. For the prosperity of Inherited Glyphs found in everyday life, for the right of using Inherited Glyphs in the digital world, and for the sake of not letting any regime nor organization prevent us from doing so, we have compiled the results of numerous scholarly works into several standardized, open-source documents tailored toward digital type standards. We have further refined our predecessors’ meticulous work by carefully analyzing and correcting any errors found. Just by using our documents, digital typeface designers can create an etymologically correct and aesthetically pleasing Inherited Glyph typeface.
The editors of this list have compared character components using several authoritative Inherited Glyph standards, and have selected the most suitable candidates for each component according to our Inherited Glyph standard guidelines. For Inherited Glyph components with several variants, the list provides the forms most etymologically correct yet still within common convention, and the forms suited toward particular aesthetic needs commonly found in Inherited Glyph publications. “Within common convention” refers to forms suitable for daily use and immediately recognizable to the eye, which would not be mistaken for other characters or as incorrect. Typeface designers can select between “etymological” and “aesthetic” forms as needed.
When batch-converting New Character Glyphs to Inherited Glyphs, a “one-to-one” component conversion is necessary whenever possible. For example, Component A cannot be converted into component B and component C at the same time. If two or more given Inherited Glyph components have been merged in the New Character Glyph standard, other components or strokes associated with the given components must be used to distinguish between the Inherited components used in different situations.
Because Inherited components are often merged within New Character Glyph standards, batch converting Inherited to New Character is simple, but batch converting New Character to Inherited Glyph is quite complicated. If there are any issues or errors within this list, please do not hesitate to point them out so they can be amended.
- component_of_recom_inherited_glyphs-1.36.pdf
- Version: 1.36
- Date: 2022/09/17
- Produced by: I.Font Project Editorial Department
- Editor-in-Chief: 內木一郎
- Co-editors: 陳輝恒、李爾樅、鍾啟堯
- Assistant editors: 陳志泓、佟藍歌、伍梓豪
- Other assistants: 李任之、Extc、陳柏逸、蓋艾倫
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
Inherited glyphs had always been the character standard set by academics. Unfortunately, the international organizations of today that handle Chinese character encoding focus on the character standards imposed by regimes or their associated organizations, ignoring the academic efforts of the past. As a result, the character standards set by certain regimes which disrespected tradition and readily altered established Inherited forms, have been able to run rampant. Regardless of their inherent errors, issues, or inconsistencies, these standards have effortlessly made their way into encoding documents for typeface creators to “follow” when creating typefaces. The labours of scholars and generational aesthetic traditions of type craftsmen have been cast aside, attacked, and ridiculed by certain people who spread the lie that “Inherited Glyphs have no standard,” deliberately misinterpreting right and wrong.
In order to preserve and promote Inherited Glyphs, and promote the recommended forms of modern standardized Inherited Glyphs, we had spent years of effort carefully compiling the results of several authoritative Inherited Glyph standards. Now, we have released the Table of Recommended Inherited Glyphs, which clearly lists each recommended form alongside its respective character encoding as a more direct and convenient resource for typeface creators. We also hope it will take away any pretext detractors may make.
The Table of Recommended Inherited Glyphs completely covers Big5’s range of 13,000+ characters, and more than 1,000 supplementary Chinese characters, which meets most (traditional) Chinese usage needs. By searching a Unicode or Big5 codepoint, you can directly find out what the recommended Inherited form of a certain character looks like.
- All tables: table_of_recom_inherited_glyphs-1.04.pdf
- Version: 1.04
- Date: 2022/09/17
- Produced by: I.Font Project Editorial Department
- Editor-in-Chief: 內木一郎
- Co-editors: 夜煞之樂、陳輝恒
- Assistant editors: 陳輝恒、李爾樅、鍾啟堯
- Other assistants: 陳志泓、佟藍歌、伍梓豪
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
While compiling the List of Recommended Inherited Glyph Components, it was often necessary to explain where and what strokes should be made, and what strokes should not be made. However, the stroke terminology within Chinese character academic circles at present is dis-unified, and each governmental nomenclature “standard” has its own problems. Therefore, when compiling the list it was necessary to determine stroke names, and even the names of strokes unused within Inherited Glyphs.
Some differences within the current stroke names are just due to different habits, and not a matter of good and bad. For example, ㇀ can be referred to as 挑, 提, or 策 — simply a matter of choosing. Some differences are not. For example, 折 (fold): how many degrees determines a 折, and what direction determines a 折? When can the character 折 be omitted or not? We have discovered that even within a single stroke “standard,” definitions and usages of these names can be contradictory. These internal contradictions not only make stroke names unclear but also create potential misunderstandings.
Because of this, we decided to create a clear and unified stroke definition set. At the same time, we also determined English stroke definitions. The stroke names are consistent with Chinese, translation is based on meaning, and are organized under representative letters derived from the initial letter of parent components. Different strokes cannot have the same representative letter.
If there are any issues or errors within this list, please do not hesitate to point them out so they can be amended.
- stroke_of_inherited_glyphs-1.27.pdf
- Version: 1.27
- Date: 2022/09/17
- Produced by: I.Font Project Editorial Department
- Editor-in-Chief: 內木一郎
- Editorial assistants: 陳輝恒、李爾樅、鍾啟堯、佟藍歌
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.