Jiu zixing

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Chinese characters
Scripts
Precursors Oracle-bone Bronze Seal (bird-worm large small) Clerical Regular Semi-cursive Cursive Flat brush Simplified characters Type styles Imitation Song Ming Sans-serif
Properties
Strokes (order) Radicals Classification
Variants
Character-form standards Kangxi Dictionary Jiu Zixing/Inherited Form Xin Zixing General Standard Chinese Characters (PRC) Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese Characters (Hong Kong) Standard Typefaces for Chinese Characters (ROC Taiwan) Grapheme-usage standards Graphemic variants General Standard Characters (PRC) Jōyō kanji (Japan) Other standards Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC) Previous standards Commonly-used Characters (PRC) Frequently-used Characters (PRC) Tōyō kanji (Japan)
Reforms
Chinese Clerical reforms Traditional characters Simplified characters (first round second round) Debate Japanese Old (Kyūjitai) New (Shinjitai) Ryakuji Sino-Japanese Differences between Shinjitai and Simplified characters Korean Yakja Singaporean Table of Simplified Characters
Homographs
Literary and colloquial readings
Use in particular scripts
Written Chinese Zetian characters Slavonic transcription Hokkien Nüshu Kanji (Kokuji) Kana (Man'yōgana) Idu Hanja (Gukja) Chữ Nôm Sawndip
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Jiu zixing (Chinese: 旧字形; simplified Chinese: 旧字形; traditional Chinese: 舊字形; pinyin: jiù zìxíng; lit. 'Old character form'), also known as inherited glyphs form (Chinese: 传承字形; simplified Chinese: 传承字形; traditional Chinese: 傳承字形; pinyin: chuánchéng zìxíng), or traditional glyph form (Chinese: 传统字形; simplified Chinese: 传统字形; traditional Chinese: 傳統字形; pinyin: chuántǒng zìxíng, not to be confused with Traditional Chinese), is a traditional printing orthography form of Chinese character which uses the orthodox forms, mainly referring to the traditional Chinese character glyphs, especially the printed forms after movable type printing. Jiu zixing is formed in the Ming Dynasty, and is also known as Kyūjitai in Japan; it also refers to the characters used in China before the Chinese writing reform and the issuing of 1964 "List of Character Forms of Common Chinese characters for Publishing".

Broadly speaking, jiu zixing also refers to the character forms used in printing Chinese before reformation by national stardardization, e.g. xin zixing (Chinese: 新字形; pinyin: xīn zìxíng; lit. 'New character form') in mainland China, Standard Form of National Characters in Taiwan, and List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters in Hong Kong; jiu zixing is generally the opposite form of the standards. The representative books that used jiu zixing includes "Kangxi Dictionary", "Zhongwen Da Cidian", "Dahanhe Cidian", "Chinese-Korean Dictionary", and "Zhonghua Da Zidian".

There are several standards of jiu zixing developed by scholars before, but there is no single enforced standard. Variations of jiu zixing standard can be see in Kangxi Dictionary, Old Chinese printing form, Korean Hanja, some printing forms in Taiwan and MingLiU in Windows 98 and earlier versions; slight differences may occur between different jiu zixing standards. Currently there are also open-sourced communities that developed and maintain modern jiu zixing standards that are based on and/or unify other jiu zixing forms from academic researches.

Origin[]

During the woodblock printing era, words are usually carved in handwritten form (regular script) as each woodblock is different, making the job tedious per printed book. The development of wooden movable type in Song dynasty has caused the Chinese characters to take on a more rectangular form following the wood texture of the pieces. Vertical strokes are thicken to reduce engraving loss, while a little triangle is added at the end of horizontal stroke and start of vertical stroke to improve the legibility of text even after the pieces are worn out by long-term use. As the character styles start to differ widely from regular script, the calligraphic methods used on regular scripts could not be used on movable type characters and a new distinctive style designated for movable type is born. This style is developed fully in Ming dynasty, which now develops to Ming typefaces.^[1]

Comparing the style between movable type and woodblock, it can be noticed that movable type characters - which is the basics of jiu zixing today - is different from the random and changing nature of handwritten regular script, and emphasize clear strokes and beautiful, symmetric structure of characters. Movable type characters also emphasize the philology aspects of Chinese characters than regular script.

Characteristics[]

Compared to regular script form and xin zixing which is based on regular script form, jiu zixing has many differences from xin zixing. The nomenclature for strokes here uses the inherited name.

From outlook[]

• Breaking of strokes:^[2] In components such as "