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Frank_Breen2
Frank_Breen2
Level 8
January 15, 2016
Question

Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

  • January 15, 2016
  • 8 replies
  • 9882 views

As a Western Email Developer I was asked to develop emails in Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean (CJK). After a lot of research, testing and actual sends here is my guide.

First of all we need to declare English target fonts before Chinese target fonts, because English language fonts do not contain the glyphs for Chinese characters, but Chinese fonts do contain a-z characters. This means if you declare the Chinese fonts first, any English-language computer that has the standard Chinese font faces installed will display English characters using Chinese fonts (Example: Western installs of the Operating Systems) . This means English characters will be rendered in the first font and Chinese characters will be displayed using the fall-back Chinese fonts. Even if the Email is entirely in Chinese, English character will pop-up on occasion, so it's good to declare this way. The same theory goes for Japanese and Korean declarations.

Fonts for Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional:

Windows

宋体, SimSun

OS X

华文仿宋, STFangsong

The above is my tried and tested fonts, other fonts available are:

Windows

黑体：SimHei

新宋体：NSimSun

仿宋：FangSong

楷体：KaiTi

仿宋_GB2312：FangSong_GB2312

楷体_GB2312：KaiTi_GB2312

微软雅黑体：Microsoft YaHei

OS X

冬青黑体: Hiragino Sans GB

华文细黑：STHeiti Light [STXihei]

华文黑体：STHeiti

华文楷体：STKaiti

华文宋体：STSong

What this looks like in the declaration:

font-family: Arial, 宋体, SimSun, 华文仿宋, STFangsong, sans-serif;

Fonts for Japanese:

Windows

メイリオ, Meiryo

ＭＳ Ｐゴシック, MS PGothic

OX X

ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro

What this looks like in the declaration:

font-family: Arial, メイリオ, Meiryo, ＭＳ Ｐゴシック, MS PGothic, ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, sans-serif;

Fonts for Korean

Windows

돋움, Dotum

OS X

굴림, Gulim

What this looks like in the declaration:

font-family: Arial, 돋움, Dotum, 굴림, Gulim, sans-serif;

It's best practice to use both the Local and English spelling of the fonts along with the PC and Mac declaration.

Attached below is a text document with declarations for easy reference.

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    8 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    February 18, 2016

    Great post, Frank.

    Are these fonts the general fonts found on computers in their respective regions?

    Thanks!

    Frank_Breen2
    Frank_Breen2Author
    Level 8
    February 18, 2016

    Yes these fonts are installed as normal out in each of the regions, if you use both the local spelling of the font and the english spelling, it will cover you in case the computer has been installed using local or western settings. I've done physical testing on all of the above out in each zone and they all work well.

    A
    Anonymous
    February 18, 2016

    Awesome. Thanks!

    Colin_Ryder
    Colin_Ryder
    Level 4
    February 23, 2016

    @Boris Kiperas​ - This might interest you

      A
      Anonymous
      February 26, 2016

      Thanks Frank this is very timely as we are doing more and more Japanese programs.

      A
      Anonymous
      February 29, 2016

      @Frank Breen​ Can I repost on our main Marketo Marketing Nation Community blog?

      Marketing Central Blog

      s

      Frank_Breen2
      Frank_Breen2Author
      Level 8
      February 29, 2016

      Yes go ahead, happy to share it.

      A
      Anonymous
      March 1, 2016

      i have reposted this great post here:

      Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

      A
      Anonymous
      March 9, 2016

      Hi I just wanted to report that we found this font code worked for us for Japanese in our templates: font-family: Meiryo UI, sans-serif;

      I had been copying in: font-family: Arial, メイリオ, Meiryo, ＭＳ Ｐゴシック, MS PGothic, ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, sans-serif;      But the fonts listed prior to Meiryo were pushing out the Japanese text and it was not wrapping to the next line within the template width.     Cheers!

        Frank_Breen2
        Frank_Breen2Author
        Level 8
        March 9, 2016

        Do you have screen grab of what it looks like when you used: Arial, メイリオ, Meiryo, ＭＳ Ｐゴシック, MS PGothic, ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, sans-serif;

        I've been using this for a number of years and my Japanese colleagues never reported issues. I've used it here too: cmegroup.com/ja/. Would be interested to see what conflicts you had.

        Taishi_Yamada
        Taishi_Yamada
        Level 6
        April 18, 2018

        just FYI,

        The latest OSs (Win10 and recent Mac OS versions) have use another fonts set as default in Japanese.

        It still supports the traditional fonts, but looks different and old.

        Frank_Breen2
        Frank_Breen2Author
        Level 8
        March 12, 2019

        @Taishi Yamada​, what are the new font names for Japan, do you have any local websites that are using them?

        A
        Anonymous
        October 2, 2018

        Does anyone know of a good font-family stack for Vietnamese?

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