Why is japanese written vertically

Active 3 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 5k times. Is there any difference between writing kanji symbols in vertical or horizontal direction? Improve this question. Add a comment.

Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Additionally, some characters look very similar but are written differently. Students who practice both reading and writing can easily distinguish these characters, but students who only practice reading may find it difficult. The East Asian Calligraphy wikibook has some material on stroke orders.

There are instances where kanji, hiragana, and katakana may be replaced by another writing style. Frequently, words that have kanji are written in hiragana. Some kanji are simply rarely used but their reading is known. When writing for an audience that isn't expected to know certain kanji such as in texts aimed at young people or kanji outside the standard set , their reading is often added on top of, or to the right of the characters, depending on whether they are written horizontally or vertically, respectively.

Since kanji can have several different readings, it may not be straightforward to determine how to read a certain word.

This problem is particularly pronounced in place names where readings may be highly irregular and archaic. Though katakana are principally used for loan words from other languages, it can be used for stylistic purposes.

Either to highlight a certain word, or give it a different feel e. Furthermore, since some personal names don't have kanji, but are written in hiragana, personal name readings are generally written in katakana to indicate that these are not the name itself, but simply the pronunciation.

Kanji numerals can still be found, however, in more traditional situations e. In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom. The columns are ordered from right to left, so at the bottom of each column the reader returns to the top of the next column on the left of the preceding one. This copies the column order of Chinese. This concerns situations where the space has to be efficiently used like you will see in Japanese newspapers or magazines , for example.

Both writing orientations are combined to optimize the space available and to designate distinct text elements.

You will usually see horizontal text for headings or captions and vertical text for the main text. An extreme example of space optimization in Japan is the Tokyo metro station map where you can see text written vertically and horizontally to maximize the space in order to fit in all the information. See picture below for a better idea of what space optimization means in Japan. Another common example where the Japanese combine both writing orientations is on their precious business cards.

If you get the chance to exchange your business card with a Japanese, you will probably notice that his or her card will be written vertically in Japanese on one side, but written horizontally in English on the other side. The last example I want to talk you about has to do with postcards and letters.

This one is not focused on optimizing the space, but it concerns different levels of politeness. If you already studied a little of the Japanese culture, you probably know that the Japanese are extremely polite and their language structure focus precisely on this aspect. This is why the use of vertical or horizontal text is so important in postcards and letters.

The vertical writing is more formal so if a postcard or letter is destined to a person older than you or your superior it is more likely to be vertical. Yes, I know that you are probably thinking that this story of text direction was already complicated enough so why on earth would they add an exception?

This type of writing comes from the traditional vertical right to left and the main reason for its use was the lack of space. It was also used for official documents like banknotes.

But still you can come across some old-fashioned signboards with this exception from the past.