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This part really struck me: "Character Comfort – Logographic-based languages can contain a lot of meaning in just few characters. While these characters can lo

by kunle 9y ago

This part really struck me: "Character Comfort – Logographic-based languages can contain a lot of meaning in just few characters. While these characters can look cluttered and confusing to the western eye, they actually allow Japanese speakers to become comfortable with processing a lot of information in short period of time / space (the same goes for Chinese)." The concept that your native language can impact information processing speed/density is pretty interesting.

Double_a_92 9y ago
I think we westeners also do that. Words are symbols to us too, we don't really read the words letter by letter... Thats why the "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch…" text is still readable ( http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/aoccdrnig-to-rscheearch http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/aoccdrnig-to-rscheearch ).
- baconizer 9y ago
  I think he meant more in the fundamental difference between phonetic vs logographic. For the latter, when speaker can't read a new word but can have a good guess of what it means.
toyg 9y ago
I personally think this is the main reason, coupled with the natural tendency of kanji to look like squares. Western languages deal with lines, Eastern ones with squares. The former need significant amount of empty space to be readable, the latter not really; the former must flow horizontally, the latter not really; the former is drastically different from images, the latter not really (which is why emojis originated in Japan, among other things). That’s all stuff that directly impacts design density and so on.
- kijin 9y ago
 Exactly. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean letters are all designed to fit in a square grid. Movable type was invented in Korea 200 years before Gutenberg, and their version was much easier because they just had to plug letters into a square grid. When I was a kid, everyone learned to write on sheets of paper containing a 20x10 grid. Lengths of books and school essays in Korea are still frequently measured by the number of 20x10 sheets they would take up if printed on such a grid. When your writing system is designed to fill a two-dimensional grid, whitespace is not only unnecessary but also potentially distracting. Chinese and Japanese don't even use spaces between words. (Korean does, at least in modern usage.) Leaving a large amount of space between lines would break up a block that should belong together. Probably for the same reason, WYSIWYG editors here tend to insert instead of when you press the Enter key, Western semantics be damned. Extra space between paragraphs is implemented using two 's instead of margins on the tag. In other words, people see no need for vertical space that isn't an integer multiple of the height of a 1-em square.
- yongjik 9y ago
 Hmm, actually, my (Korean) experience is that East Asian typesetting compensates by adding extra space between lines. Because each character fills a square block, if you pack characters as close as possible, a paragraph becomes a rectangular array of dense squares, which is tiring to the eyes. Adding extra space between lines makes it much easier to read. With Latin alphabets, characters have irregular shapes, so you will have enough "holes" between successive lines, which helps the reader follow the current line.

by kunle 9y ago

Double_a_92 9y ago

I think we westeners also do that. Words are symbols to us too, we don't really read the words letter by letter... Thats why the "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch…" text is still readable ( http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/aoccdrnig-to-rscheearch http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/aoccdrnig-to-rscheearch ).

baconizer 9y ago
I think he meant more in the fundamental difference between phonetic vs logographic. For the latter, when speaker can't read a new word but can have a good guess of what it means.

toyg 9y ago

I personally think this is the main reason, coupled with the natural tendency of kanji to look like squares. Western languages deal with lines, Eastern ones with squares. The former need significant amount of empty space to be readable, the latter not really; the former must flow horizontally, the latter not really; the former is drastically different from images, the latter not really (which is why emojis originated in Japan, among other things). That’s all stuff that directly impacts design density and so on.

kijin 9y ago
Exactly. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean letters are all designed to fit in a square grid. Movable type was invented in Korea 200 years before Gutenberg, and their version was much easier because they just had to plug letters into a square grid. When I was a kid, everyone learned to write on sheets of paper containing a 20x10 grid. Lengths of books and school essays in Korea are still frequently measured by the number of 20x10 sheets they would take up if printed on such a grid. When your writing system is designed to fill a two-dimensional grid, whitespace is not only unnecessary but also potentially distracting. Chinese and Japanese don't even use spaces between words. (Korean does, at least in modern usage.) Leaving a large amount of space between lines would break up a block that should belong together. Probably for the same reason, WYSIWYG editors here tend to insert instead of when you press the Enter key, Western semantics be damned. Extra space between paragraphs is implemented using two 's instead of margins on the tag. In other words, people see no need for vertical space that isn't an integer multiple of the height of a 1-em square.
yongjik 9y ago
Hmm, actually, my (Korean) experience is that East Asian typesetting compensates by adding extra space between lines. Because each character fills a square block, if you pack characters as close as possible, a paragraph becomes a rectangular array of dense squares, which is tiring to the eyes. Adding extra space between lines makes it much easier to read. With Latin alphabets, characters have irregular shapes, so you will have enough "holes" between successive lines, which helps the reader follow the current line.