China to Hunt Down ‘Incorrect and Non-Standard’ Fonts

Eris Alar

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010091/china-to-hunt-down-incorrect-and-non-standard-fonts

spotted this news item from April, has it affected anyone here? 

Ruixi Zhang

Where to start… The headline, like all news headlines, is designed to be click-baiting. I read “出现了部分字体使用场合不当、质量水平较低等问题” as the equivalent of “using Comic Sans in legal briefs”; I read “‘丑书’‘怪书’类信息化字体产品，对字体进行粗俗、草率的夸张变形” as the equivalent of “there are badly produced font products” (which the article translated as “‘ugly’ and ‘weird’ font products which contain vulgar and sloppy exaggerations and deformations in fonts”). As for the “correctness” of Chinese characters, a quick search on Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja or CJK type design will yield an understanding that the same character often can have different forms (sometimes massive difference in stroke constructions, and even different number of strokes!) across pan-East Asia.