What are the line breaking rules you must respect in Asian languages?

[nabylm]

Hi,

I am trying to build a useful "data pool" for line breaking rules in Asian languages.
Indeed, I have been handling several projects into Chinese, Japanese, etc... that came back with the same feedback: Line breaking rules must be respected.

What I learned so far, is that in Chinese, those rules concern mostly punctuation marks. For instance, you can't start a line with an exclamation mark, or end one with a $ (dollar) sign.

I think those rules are even heavier in Japanese, as you now have characters that are not allowed at the start or end of a line.... On top of that, there are goups of characters that can't be split, as their union gives you the meaning of the targeted word, whereas each character one by one means something else....

Are you familiar with such issue? What do you do to avoid line breaking errors (for project managers)?
Does anybody have a list, or found one online that sums up those rules?

Thanks for helping out!

[santiagop]

Hi nabylm

You can find some helpful links in Microsoft website regarding rules for breaking lines in Asian languages:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc194865.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc194866.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc194867.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc194868.aspx

Enjoy it

[nabylm]

Great Links santiagop, very useful.
Let's see if I got it right... It means that in MS Word there is an embedded algorythm that checks/fixes those line breaking rules in Chinese/Thai/Japanese/Korean. Is it right?

[santiagop]

As far as I know you are right. But I'm not sure if that functionality is available by default or if you have to turn it on in the Advanced options. I'll make some investigations and let you know

[santiagop]

Hi Nabylm,
As I told you before, you have to activate the line breaking rules for Asian languages since they are not activated by default.

To activate line-breaking rules, go to File > Options > Advanced > Layout Options (at bottom) > Use line-breaking rules (mark checkbox)
To keep roman characters in their original font, go to File > Options > Advanced > Editing Options > Asian fonts also apply to Latin text (uncheck box)

Hope it helps

[nabylm]

Amazing! I'll try it and let you know.

[nabylm]

santiagop, I just set this to my MS Word. One more question: now that I have it all set correctly, let's say I open/edit a chinese file, save it, and send the file to someone who doesnt have his settings right (or maybe just left it as "default") how is that person going to see the file?

[santiagop]

Since these settings affect the program and not the document itself I believe that the other person must apply the same settings to see the document properly. So, you should always attach a PDF copy with the doc file so the client see it OK

[nabylm]

Understood. Thanks for the pdf Tip !

[santiagop]

Keeping in the same topic, what about the rule in English or some other Western Languages?
As a DTPer I always try to do the following:
1) Never break measure units or quantities
2) Articles are never followed by a line break
3) Names or places should always be in the same line if possible (think of them as a single word with many parts)
4) Avoid break a line after a preposition

I guess there are a lot more and some may vary among different languages. So if somebody can add more, that would be great