When writing official documents, why use imitation Song GB2312 fonts?

This article is about 5600 words

It takes 15 minutes to read

Since the appearance of oracle bone inscriptions, Chinese characters have generally experienced the evolution of seal script, official script, cursive script, regular script, and running script. With the development of technology and the popularity of computers, keyboard input is becoming more and more common, and there will be corresponding format requirements when using computers to write (For example, the title is number three Song typeface, bold and centered, and the text is small size four). The official documents of party and government agencies are an important tool for implementing leadership, performing functions, and handling official affairs. The format of official documents also has strict requirements. How did imitation Song typeface appear? What is GB? What does 2312 mean?

Imitation Song GB2312 font installation Preview interface. Source/Network

How did "Fake Song Dynasty" come from

The emergence of imitation Song fonts is closely related to the development of printing. Nowadays, the fonts of Chinese characters can be roughly divided into two systems: calligraphy fonts and printing fonts. Seal script, cursive script and running script belong to calligraphy fonts, while imitation Song typeface is a printing font specially designed for printing.

In fact, print is also developed from handwritten fonts. Looking back in history, the earliest printed fonts were italics. On the one hand, regular script in the modern sense developed and matured in the Tang Dynasty, and was widely used in official documents and folks in the Tang Dynasty; on the other hand, woodblock printing was invented in the Tang Dynasty. Before the invention of printing, books were copied by hand. Therefore, the birth of engraving and printing in the Tang Dynasty was originally to bring convenience to the copyists at that time.

"Carving block" means carving with wooden boards, and jujube wood or pear wood is used for one version. After selecting the wood, saw the boards into pieces according to the size of the book, and then soak them in water for about a month, or boil them in water. After that, the plates are planed, dried in the shade, and finally rubbed with soybean oil, scraped and polished. After that, you can paste the "sample writing" on the wooden board. "Sample writing" is to write down the words to be engraved on the paper. If you find any mistakes in the writing, dig out the mistakes and paste them on white paper to make up. After the proofreading is correct, the sample can be pasted on the plate in reverse, and then it can be printed. The purpose of printing is to dig out the parts without words and leave the parts with words, so that the characters are prominent and easy to print. Before the step of engraving, there were still handwritten characters on the plate, but after the engraving, the traces of knife carving were left on the font, and the printed characters after engraving were roughly the same as the handwritten characters.

The Tang Dynasty was the period when the art of regular script was fully developed. Many famous calligraphers emerged, such as Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing, Liu Gongquan, etc. They adapted to The law of the development of the art of calligraphy improved and transformed the regular script, and popularized the art of calligraphy from the scholar-official class to the general public. Therefore, most of the fonts written by the writers at that time were regular script imitating the brushwork of famous masters. In this context, Kaishu became the original "printing font" of course. It can be said that regular script is the basis of all printing fonts.

The beginning of the Diamond Sutra And the title page painting (Tang Dynasty) are the earliest woodblock prints with a clear date in existence in China. Source/Network

The Song typeface we call today was developed on the basis of regular script. Hu Yinglin, a scholar of the Ming Dynasty, said in "Shaoshi Shanfang Bi Cong"(Part A):" Since the Sui Dynasty, it has been practiced in the Tang Dynasty, expanded in the Five Dynasties, and mastered by the people of the Song Dynasty." After the development of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, woodblock printing entered its peak period in the Song Dynasty.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, engraved block calligraphy was still in regular script, and there appeared people who specialized in writing standard regular script. They have a solid foundation in regular script, adhering to the legacy of "the people of the Tang Dynasty respecting the law", and competing to imitate the calligraphy of famous masters of the Tang Dynasty.

Compared with writing, engraving work is more difficult and boring, and the income of engravers is quite meager. Coupled with the high demand for books at that time, in order to survive, the engravers could only work regardless of the cold winter and hot summer, and constantly explored ways to improve work efficiency. They found that reducing the number of knife strokes while maintaining the basic shape of the text can greatly speed up the work progress. The most effective way to reduce the number of sword strikes is to simplify the original arcs of the characters into straight lines, and make the complicated and irregular places simple, regular and easy to handle. Song typefaces are beginning to show signs of this change. It can be said that the more regular script used in the printed version of the Song edition is the source of the Song font.

《Mr. Collected Works" Song block edition. Source/Peking University Library

During the Ming Dynasty, Ming Taizu adopted a policy of suppressing martial arts and writing, and the printing and publishing industry developed greatly. The engravings of the Ming Dynasty tried their best to imitate the fonts of the Song version. Although the shape and structure of the Song version of the fonts were roughly maintained, they inevitably infiltrated the operational awareness and habits of the engravers, and the style of the Song version of the fonts gradually changed. The oblique strokes gradually become smoother, and the structural layout gradually becomes uniform. We can regard the fonts that imitated the Song version in the early Ming Dynasty as the basis of Song typefaces.

Ming Dynasty engraved edition of "The Path Shanzang" Song style characters have been formed at this time. Source/Palace Museum

Carver’s long-term imitation of the Song version of the font deeply influenced the Ming Dynasty’s lettering norms. After Wanli, a font with a square and well-proportioned structure, easy to engrave and print, and specially designed for reading was produced, which is what we now call "Song typeface". Because it was developed by imitating the fonts on the Song version of the book, it was originally called Fang Song type (not the current Fang Song type)< /span>, later also known as Old Song Ti and Song Ti.

So how did the imitation Song typeface for writing official documents come from? As the name suggests, Imitation Song means "imitating Song style". The origin of the modern imitation Song style can be traced back to a typeface imitating the engraved version of the Song Dynasty launched by the brothers Ding Shanzhi and Ding Fuzhi in 1916 - "Ding's Juzhen imitation Song version movable type", referred to as Juzhen imitation Song ("Juzhen" is another name for movable type).

Ding Fuzhi

Although Bi Sheng invented movable type printing as early as the Northern Song Dynasty, traditional movable type printing has many types of characters, is difficult to make, and is not suitable for printing. Many shortcomings such as long-term repeated use and need for typesetting workers to have certain cultural literacy. Therefore, block printing was the mainstream printing technology in China until the Opium War. With the invasion of Western powers, Western movable type printing was also introduced into China, and our country gradually moved from traditional printing to modern printing. The emergence of imitation Song style is closely related to the introduction of movable type printing.

In 1912, Ding Licheng, the father of the Ding brothers, passed away. "Yin Yin Manuscript" was printed in the world. The Ding brothers believed that their father's posthumous works should be exquisite and unique, and should not be printed out in a crude manner. At that time, the popular printing font was Song-style, but most of the lead molds of Song-style on the market came from Japan. The outline of the lead type was rigid and the structure of the font was loose, so it was not very elegant to print into a book. Therefore, the Ding brothers decided to use the engraved version of the Song Dynasty as a template to design imitations and engrave movable type.

At first, Brother Ding used boxwood to engrave characters, but the labor cost was too high, so he decided to switch to printed type, and went to Shanghai to hire The famous engravers Xu Xixiang and Zhu Yibao jointly engraved lead movable type. Finally, in 1916, "Ding's Juzhen Imitation Song Edition Movable Type" was created, which is also the first modern printing font in Chinese history. This font is quaint and beautiful, the thickness of horizontal and vertical strokes tends to be uniform, the overall strokes are slightly thinner, there are oblique edges and corners at the beginning of the stroke, and sharp-edged shoulders at the curved part. It is harmonious, tall and straight, and is pleasing to the eye.

Juzhen imitates the printing style of Songyin Bookstore

After creating the typeface, the Ding brothers founded Juzhen Fangsong Printing Bookstore in Shanghai. Later, Juzhen Fangsong Printing Bookstore was shut down due to poor management Zhonghua Book Company took over the operation in 1920, and in 1921 formally entered into a contract and merged into Zhonghua Book Company. At the same time, the ownership of Juzhen Fangsong fonts was also transferred.

In 1920, Zhonghua Book Company established Juzhen Fangsong Printing Department after acquiring Juzhen Fangsong Printing Bookstore and Juzhen Fangsong Fonts. Typeface has published numerous books, periodicals and advertisements. But Zhonghua Book Company did not make further development on the basis of Juzhen Fangsong fonts, but only expanded the font size, expanding the font size of Juzhen Fangsong from five font sizes and types at the beginning of purchase to eight types of fonts, adding Juzhen Fangsong fonts Application side. Zhonghua Book Company uses Juzhen Fangsong mainly for typesetting ancient books, textbooks and periodicals. It played a pivotal role in the promotion of Fangsong, making Juzhen Fangsong a font that led the trend of writing in the Republic of China.

Juzhen's "Four Parts" printed in imitation of Song Dynasty

It is precisely because of the success of Zhonghua Bookstore Juzhen imitating Song Dynasty fonts that it drives other bookstores(such as Commercial Press, World Bookstore, Dadong Bookstore, etc.) and Font Factory(such as Shanghai Huafeng Printing and Casting Institute, etc.) created imitation song fonts, which brought imitation song fonts into a golden age of development. "Imitation Song Style" has gradually formed and matured in the first half of the 20th century.

With the exchange of Chinese and Western cultures, boldface characters appeared in the period of the Republic of China, but the boldface characters were not adopted until after the founding of the People's Republic of China Commonly used, nowadays, KaiTi, SongTi, FangSongTi and HeiTi are collectively called the "Four Big Printing Styles" of Chinese characters.

From movable type printing to computer fonts

In the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the printing fonts in our country followed the copper mold type before liberation, and the fonts were outdated and messy. There are no standards for the four major printed fonts of Song, Hei, Kai, and Fangsong that were left behind at the time. In addition, from 1956 to 1959, the state successively announced four batches of simplified fonts and radicals with a total of about 3,000 characters. Due to popularization and application, the four fonts of Song, Hei, Kai, and Fangsong needed to be replaced with simplified characters.

Group photo of Shanghai Institute of Printing Technology in 1962

In 1961, the state established the Type Research Office of the Shanghai Institute of Printing Technology and started new type development activities. In the year of its establishment, the Font Research Office successively developed "Song Yi", "Song Er Ti" and "Hei Yi". Songyi was first used in the typesetting of the main text of the 1965 edition of "Ci Hai"; Song II was used in the typesetting of the main text of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" in 1965; Hei Yi was used in the typesetting of "Ci Hai", reference books and map annotations, etc. In addition, type designers have also innovated Kai and imitation Song. The newly designed Kai font is widely used in children's books, and the layout is fresh and eye-catching, even and tidy. The imitation Song style is elegant and elegant, and is widely used in party and government documents.

New 1961 Write Chinese Printed Typefaces", font designer Xu Xuecheng designed Songti No. 8

Technological advances are driving the development of typography. In the 1980s, computer-to-plate technology was born, and the layout graphic information of computer typesetting can be directly output to printing equipment after digital processing. What we use today is the computer font library that has been described in digital language in the computer.

In fact, every word displayed on the computer is a work of art, a painting, countless works of art The collection constitutes a font library. The Founder Imitation Song Simplified, Black Body, and Chinese Xinwei we see on the computer are all font names, not font names, such as "Founder Imitation Song Simplified" and "Fang Song GB2312" (also known as the Great Wall imitating Song), "Fan Song GBK" and so on are all fonts containing thousands of imitating Song-style Chinese characters. The fonts in these fonts are all imitating Song-style.

Someone may ask, what is the difference between the fonts of "Founder Imitation Song Simplified", "Imitation Song GB2312" and "Imitation Song GBK" Woolen cloth?

Let's take the imitation of Song GB2312 as an example. GB2312 is the national encoding standard for Chinese characters. Among them, GB is the abbreviation of the Chinese pinyin of "national standard", which is a coding scheme formulated according to the national Chinese character information code exchange character set standard.

"Chinese Character Coded Character Set for Information Interchange—Basic Set" was formulated in 1980, and the corresponding national standard code is GB2312-80 . At that time, only 6,763 Chinese characters and 682 codes of non-Chinese graphic symbols were included, which was the earliest Chinese character coding scheme in my country. Due to the limitations of technical conditions, the font types in the initial computer were mainly Song, Hei, Kai and Fang Song. Imitation Song GB2312 is a font produced by Great Wall Computer Company in 1991. According to the national standard at that time, GB2312-80 was used for encoding.

With the development of society, the characters contained in this standard can no longer meet the needs, so a new one is formulated on this basis coding standards. In December 1995, my country promulgated the "Expansion Specification of Chinese Character Internal Code", referred to as GBK. Among them, "GB" is the national standard, and "K" is "extended". This is the extended character set of GB2312-80, which accepts 21003 characters.

Various font design companies have also produced Song, Hei, Kai, and Fangsong fonts that meet the GBK standard. Widespread promotion. Since the newly-produced Fangsong typeface is different from the previous fonts, Microsoft uses Fangsong GB2312 and Fangsong GBK to distinguish them in the Windows system.

In June 2000, my country promulgated the "Expansion of the Basic Set of Chinese Coded Character Sets for Information Exchange", and the standard code is GB18030 -2000. After September 2001, it was officially implemented as a national standard.

In 2005, the state revised GB18030 once. In 2022, GB18030 will be revised again. GB18030-2022 "Information Technology: Chinese Coded Character Set" was released on July 19, 2022 and will be implemented on August 1, 2023.

However, the question arises again, what are "Founder" and "Hanyi"? This is very simple, it is the name of the company that designed this font. Fangsong GB2312 was designed by Great Wall Company, so it is also called Great Wall Fangsong. In the same way, the design of Zhongyi Company is called Zhongyi Fangsong; the design of Founder Company is called Fangzheng Fangsong; the design of Hanyi Company is called Hanyi Fangsong. Of course, the fonts designed by these companies must meet the national standards.

WindowsXP's popularity

So far, what is the relationship between official document writing and Song GB2312 fonts?

With the rapid development of information technology and the popularization of computers, official documents of party and government agencies have gradually changed from handwriting and typesetting to computer Printing, the country has also formulated corresponding standards for the format of official documents of the government. On September 5, 1988, the "Format of Official Documents of State Organs" was released (GB/T9704-1988), and then on December 27, 1999, the "Format of Official Documents of State Administrative Organs"(GB/T9704-1999). In the 1999 edition, relevant provisions were made on the font and font size of each element of official documents.

At the beginning of the 20th century, my country's informatization construction ushered in a period of rapid development. According to CNNIC survey data, from 2001 to 2006, the number of computers online in my country increased rapidly, and the Windows XP system was released on August 24, 2001, becoming the computer operating system commonly used in the world at that time. However, the Fangsong font pre-installed in the WindowsXP system used the font made by Great Wall Computer Company based on GB2312, and Fangsong GB2312 became the only built-in Fangsong font in Windows XP system. The font used in the official document at that time became Fangsong GB2312. It was not until 2007 that the newly released Windows Vista began to use the imitation Song GBK font. Since then, the fonts in new computer operating systems have become more and more diverse.

In order to meet the needs of party and government agencies, in 2012, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council revised the "Format of Official Documents of State Administrative Organs" (GB/T9704-1999) was revised to form the national standard "Format of Official Documents of Party and Government Organs"(GB/T9704-2012), officially implemented on July 1, 2012, the official document is used in this standard The text uses the provisions of the No. 3 imitation Song typeface.

However, in 2012, the XP system was still widely popular in China, maintaining a high market share. According to statistics from the Statcounter website in 2012, the market share of the XP system in China remained between 65% and 80%. Even when the XP system was “retired” in 2014, 53% of Chinese computer users were still using use. In particular, many state agencies and party and government units did not install a new operating system due to problems such as usage habits, and still use the XP system that was purchased at a large price.

Windows 2012 The market share of the version system in China. Source/Statcounter

Because the country has clear requirements on the format of official documents, if the computer installs the XP version, there will be no other imitation song fonts except imitation song GB2312, use Other imitation Song fonts will cause the official document to be displayed in Song style after opening, which does not meet the format requirements of the official document.

In fact, the 2012 edition of the "Format of Official Documents of Party and Government Organs" only stipulates that the body of official documents should be in "Fake Song Style" and does not It is clearly stipulated that imitation Song GB2312 must be used. With the update of the national standard, GB2312 has been gradually abandoned, so as long as the font used in the body of the official document is imitation Song typeface, it is in line with the national standard.

Reference Information:

[1] Zhang Xiumin ． Chinese Printing History [M]. Zhejiang: Zhejiang Ancient Books Publishing House, 2006.

[2] Wang Wenying . Research on the Standardization of Printed Chinese Characters [D]. Anhui University, 2014.

[3] had Qiong. Research on the Design of Printed Chinese Characters[D]. Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, 2010.

[4] Yang Yanfang . On the Formation and Characteristics of Song Typeface[D]. Nanjing University of the Arts, 2011.

[5] Tan Xin. The Achievement of Daya—Research on the Evolution and Development of Song-like Fonts[D]. Hunan Normal University, 2015.

[6] Fu Xiaoli .Analysis of the Standard of Chinese Character Coding[J].Journal of Jinzhong Normal College,2003(02):125-126.

7, CNNIC< /span>

8, Statcounter< /span>

END

Author | Xizhou

Source: National Humanities History WeChat Official Account