Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Frank_Breen2
Level 10

Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

As a Western Email Developer I was asked to develop emails in Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean (CJK). After a lot of research, testing and actual sends here is my guide.

First of all we need to declare English target fonts before Chinese target fonts, because English language fonts do not contain the glyphs for Chinese characters, but Chinese fonts do contain a-z characters. This means if you declare the Chinese fonts first, any English-language computer that has the standard Chinese font faces installed will display English characters using Chinese fonts (Example: Western installs of the Operating Systems) . This means English characters will be rendered in the first font and Chinese characters will be displayed using the fall-back Chinese fonts. Even if the Email is entirely in Chinese, English character will pop-up on occasion, so it's good to declare this way. The same theory goes for Japanese and Korean declarations.

Fonts for Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional:

Windows

宋体, SimSun

OS X

华文仿宋, STFangsong

The above is my tried and tested fonts, other fonts available are:

Windows

黑体:SimHei

新宋体:NSimSun

仿宋:FangSong

楷体:KaiTi

仿宋_GB2312:FangSong_GB2312

楷体_GB2312:KaiTi_GB2312

微软雅黑体:Microsoft YaHei

OS X

冬青黑体: Hiragino Sans GB

华文细黑:STHeiti Light [STXihei]

华文黑体:STHeiti

华文楷体:STKaiti

华文宋体:STSong

What this looks like in the declaration:

font-family: Arial, 宋体, SimSun, 华文仿宋, STFangsong, sans-serif;

Fonts for Japanese:

Windows

メイリオ, Meiryo

MS Pゴシック, MS PGothic

OX X

ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro

What this looks like in the declaration:

font-family: Arial, メイリオ, Meiryo, MS Pゴシック, MS PGothic, ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, sans-serif;

Fonts for Korean

Windows

돋움, Dotum

OS X

굴림, Gulim

What this looks like in the declaration:

font-family: Arial, 돋움, Dotum, 굴림, Gulim, sans-serif;

It's best practice to use both the Local and English spelling of the fonts along with the PC and Mac declaration.

Attached below is a text document with declarations for easy reference.

13 REPLIES 13
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Great post, Frank.

Are these fonts the general fonts found on computers in their respective regions?

Thanks!

Frank_Breen2
Level 10

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Yes these fonts are installed as normal out in each of the regions, if you use both the local spelling of the font and the english spelling, it will cover you in case the computer has been installed using local or western settings. I've done physical testing on all of the above out in each zone and they all work well.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Awesome. Thanks!

Colin_Ryder
Level 6 - Champion Alumni

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Boris Kiperas​ - This might interest you

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Thanks Frank this is very timely as we are doing more and more Japanese programs.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Frank Breen​ Can I repost on our main Marketo Marketing Nation Community blog?

Marketing Central Blog

s

Frank_Breen2
Level 10

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Yes go ahead, happy to share it.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean Email Fonts

Hi I just wanted to report that we found this font code worked for us for Japanese in our templates: font-family: Meiryo UI, sans-serif;

I had been copying in: font-family: Arial, メイリオ, Meiryo, MS Pゴシック, MS PGothic, ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, sans-serif;      But the fonts listed prior to Meiryo were pushing out the Japanese text and it was not wrapping to the next line within the template width.     Cheers!