Letters tell: listen before you start to design

摘要

This book is made up mainly out of the articles on 'letters' in a Japanese monthly magazine series, DTPWORLD. With regard to editing design, I think Japan is a very particular country. There are many unique approaches to design because of the Japanese writing system.rnThe Japanese writing system is composed of a mixture of four characters: Kanji (Chinese characters which originate in China), Katakana, Hiragana and the Latin alphabet (which derives from Europe). Katakana are characterized as part of Kanji and are now in modern Japanese, and are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages. Hiragana are syllabic characters written in simple cursive and are mainly used for words for which there are no Kanji, suffixes and adjective inflections.