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.
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;
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;
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.
Great post, Frank.
Are these fonts the general fonts found on computers in their respective regions?
Thanks!
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.
Awesome. Thanks!
Boris Kiperas - This might interest you
Thanks Frank this is very timely as we are doing more and more Japanese programs.
Frank Breen Can I repost on our main Marketo Marketing Nation Community blog?
Marketing Central Blog
s
Yes go ahead, happy to share it.
i have reposted this great post here:
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!