縦書き
レイアウトを
Ｗｅｂ標準へ

When we refer to vertical text, we mean the style in which letters or words are arranged in a column. The columns are then read from right to left or from left to right depending on the material. In old times, there were cases where passages were written to be read from the bottom up, but this is not something commonly used nowadays. The vertical style of writing is said to be a feature found in languages that use Chinese characters such as, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese.

Vertical text is used quite often in Japan in novels, magazines, textbooks, newspapers, comics and many other published materials. It is also used in many government publications, on many shop signs, and in many catalogues and pamphlets. Its use in terms of advertising is diverse and this is not only because vertical text is an old custom in Japan, but rather for the fact that it can be used as a way to catch people’s eye and make a strong impression on the reader. This is often done by mixing vertical and horizontal text together and creating a very complicated layout that is full of expression. It is also used quite frequently on meishi, the common Japanese business card, and to write letters or the names needed to send those letters on envelopes. Musical scores for the traditional Japanese flute, the shakuhachi, are also written vertically.

For Japan, vertical text is kept not only as a cultural aspect, but because it works well as a layout to present words in the way the author wants.

We consist members from private enterprises which include but are not limited to those which produce E-book reader, publishing houses, telecommunications companies, etc. Its goal is to explore the ways in which vertical text and its layouts that are particular to the Japanese language are used and to promote the use of CSS as a global standard to express the aforementioned as well as a variety of other layouts.

The international standards commission of the world wide web known as the W3C, or the World Wide Web Consortium, has worked hard to establish the standards used in web-site design as found in programming languages such as HTML and CSS. Discussions of how to use vertical text, as found in Japanese magazines and other forms of literature, and establish it as basic program functionality on web browsers are currently underway.

Study Group on Text Layout for Next-Generation Web Browsers works both to offer its contributions up to the W3C and to promote the use of vertical text in a variety of web content.