Gothic typeface (Japanese: ゴシック体, Goshikku-tai; Korean: 고딕체; Godik-che) is a typeface characterised by strokes of even thickness, reduced curves, and lack of decorations, akin to sans serif styles in Western typography. It is the second most frequently used style of printed Japanese characters, after Minchō.

Characteristics

Similar to Ming and Song fonts, Gothic is designed for printing, but the Gothic fonts are also designed for clarity. It is frequently used in headlines, signs, and video applications.

Classifications

Square sans (Japanese: 角ゴシック, Kaku Gothic; Chinese: 黑体; Hēi-tǐ), the classic gothic in which the lines of the characters end in a sharp cutoff.

Overlapping square sans (Chinese: 迭黑体; Dié hēi-tǐ) - It is similar to the square sans, but in places where strokes overlap, a margin is inserted between the strokes to distinguish the strokes.

Square new book (Chinese: 方新书体; Fāng xīn shū-tǐ) - Uses narrow horizontal and thick vertical strokes, similar to humanist fonts such as Arial/Helvetica, or Ming.

Round sans (Japanese: 丸ゴシック; Maru Gothic, Chinese: 圆体/黑圆体; Yuán-tǐ/Hēi yuán-tǐ (lit. "round black [letter]")), which has rounded ends and corners to the lines of the characters. In some cases, short protruding stroke ends at intersection are eliminated to make the letter look rounder. This is the style of typeface used for Japanese road signs.

Overlapping round sans (Chinese: 迭圆体; Dié yuán-tǐ) - It is similar to the round sans, but in places where strokes overlap, a margin is inserted between the strokes to distinguish the strokes.

Rounded new book (Chinese: 圆新书体; Yuán xīn shū-tǐ) - Uses narrow horizontal and thick vertical strokes.

Mixed art (Chinese: 综艺体; Zōng yì-tǐ) - curved strokes are replaced by angled strokes with sharp or round corners.

The name "Gothic"

In English, Gothic is an outmoded typographic term for sans-serif. It was so named because the type color of early sans serif typefaces were thought to be similar to that of the blackletter or “gothic” script.

The term “gothic” is now rare in English, having been largely replaced by "sans serif", though it is still found in the names of some typefaces such as "Century Gothic". However, it is still the standard term in Japan for typefaces lacking the equivalent of serifs. These additions, seen in Minchō typefaces, are called uroko (fish scales) in Japanese.

In Korean, godik ("gothic") was used to describe sans-serif-like typefaces until recently. Following a Ministry of Culture-sponsored standardization of typographic terms in 1993, the Korean word dodum ("mount", "stand out") was introduced to replace godik and is now the more popular term. (Although Windows Vista now ships with Malgun Gothic font which replaces Dodum and Gulim fonts.)

In Chinese, gothic typefaces are called “Hei” (black); this is probably derived from blackletter in the same way. However, since black typefaces in English describes a typeface with heavy font weight, heavy serif typefaces are also called Hei in Chinese, which causes confusion. Coincidentally, SimHei has heavier font weight than MS Gothic, Dotum, Gulim; while Microsoft YaHei is heavier than Microsoft JhengHei and Meiryo, that also serve to perpetuate the misconception. In professional use, bold font is called 'thick' typeface (Chinese: 粗体).

Gothic typefaces in computing

In Japanese computing, the use of gothic typefaces is common, with a number of default system fonts being gothic. Also, many Korean computing environments use Gulim which includes soft curves but is similar to gothic by default. In contrast, many Chinese computing environments use Song (seriffed) typefaces by default instead.

In Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows, the default interface fonts are seriffed (MingLiU and SimSun), which is not consistent with the sans-serif styling use in most other (including East Asian) regions of the product. Starting in Windows Vista, the default interface fonts in all regions are changed to sans-serif styles, which uses Microsoft JhengHei in traditional Chinese environment, Microsoft YaHei in simplified Chinese environment.

Japanese gothic typefaces frequently seen in computing include:

Meiryo (メイリオ) – distributed with Windows Vista as default interface font.

Mona Font – a free font that is included with a number of Linux distributions

MS Gothic (ＭＳ ゴシック) – default system font distributed with Japanese version of Windows 3.1 or later, all regions of Windows 2000 and later, Microsoft Office v.X to 2004, Japanese font pack for Internet Explorer 3, Microsoft Global IME 5.02 (Japanese), Office XP Tool: Japanese Language Pack.

MS PGothic (ＭＳ Ｐゴシック) – distributed with Japanese version of Windows 95 and later, all regions of Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2004.

MS UI Gothic – Default interface font from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Distributed with Japanese version of Windows 98 and later, all regions in Windows XP.

Osaka – default system font on Classic Mac OS

Hiragino Kaku Gothic (ヒラギノ角ゴ) and Hiragino Maru Gothic (ヒラギノ丸ゴ) – default Japanese system font on Mac OS X

Kozuka Gothic (小塚ゴシック) – typeface family provided by new versions of Adobe Illustrator

GothicBBB-Medium – used by Adobe as one of the two CJK fonts in many examples in its documentation

Kochi Gothic (東風ゴシック) – Originally named Watanabe font (渡邊フォント), it was a former free font that is included with a number of Linux distributions. The development of the font stopped when it was discovered that Watanabe font was copied from the TypeBank Mincho-M font, developed by TypeBank and Design Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd.

Sazanami Gothic (さざなみゴシック) – also a former free font included with a number of Linux distributions.

Chinese gothic typefaces frequently seen in computing include:

STHeiti Light [STXihei] (华文细黑) – available in Mac OS X 10.2-10.4, Microsoft Office 2000 and XP.

STHeiti (华文黑体) – available in Mac OS X 10.2-10.4.

LiHei Pro Medium (儷黑 Pro) – available in Mac OS X 10.3-10.4.

Apple LiGothic Medium (蘋果儷中黑) – available in Mac OS 9 and OS X 10.2–10.4.

Microsoft JhengHei (微軟正黑體) – distributed with Windows Vista as default interface font. Designed by China Type Design Limited.

Microsoft YaHei (微软雅黑) – distributed with Windows Vista as default interface font.

MS Hei (MS黑体) – distributed with Microsoft Global IME 5.02 (Simplified Chinese), Office XP Tool: Simplified Chinese Language Pack.

SimHei (黑体) – distributed with Windows 2000, all regions of Windows XP.

WenQuanYi Zen Hei (文泉驿正黑) – freely available and licensed under GPL v2.0 with font embedding exceptions, including over 36,000 glyphs in total, among which 20,300 are Chinese characters.

Korean gothic typefaces frequently seen in computing include:

AppleGothic (애플고딕) – default Korean font on Apple Mac OS X.

Dotum (돋움), DotumChe (돋움체), Gulim (굴림) – Korean version of the fonts found in Microsoft Windows, all regions of Windows XP or later.

GulimChe (굴림체) – Distributed with all regions of Windows 2000 and later, Office XP Tool: Korean Language Pack.

Malgun Gothic (맑은 고딕) – distributed with Windows Vista as default interface font.

New Gulim (새굴림), Gulim Old Hangul Jamo – distributed with Old Korean support tools for Microsoft Word 2000, Office XP Tool: Korean Language Pack, Microsoft Office 2003.

Typefaces intended for global language environment include:

Arial Unicode MS – distributed with Microsoft Office 2000, XP, 2004.