Subordinate Latin

Updated: 9 January 2026
Published: 26 September 2024

Analyses like the peculiar case of japanese web design have attempted to characterize the factors that give Japanese websites that certain look . But I believe the choice of typeface is a significant, but rarely discussed, contributing factor. There's something about the fonts used on these websites that code them as as Japanese in origin. But what?

Japanese fonts (more broadly CJK fonts) have wider Latin letterforms. The blog post Say Hello to our preview new Japanese collection with Zen Fonts: Learn about the complex beauty of Japanese fonts by Min-Young Kim, explains:

The Latin inside Japanese fonts

Japanese typeface designers call the Latin script section of their projects the “Subordinate Latin.” The typical Latin typeface has glyphs with varying proportional widths, but Kanji are designed to fit within a square space which means they are much wider than most Latin letterforms. This means a typical Latin font will look much too narrow when mixed in among Japanese characters. To allow Latin to blend with the other scripts in Japanese text, Latin letterforms are modified to be slightly wider and have shorter ascenders and descenders and bigger counters. In addition to this adjusted Latin, [some] Japanese fonts also include a “full width” Latin design.

Japanese Subordinate Latin (top) compared to Times New Roman (bottom)

Fullwidth and halfwidth forms

So that mixed-Latin/CJK text is visually harmonious some fonts also have Latin fullwidth forms, matching the width of CJK characters. They are rendered by either enabling the font-variant-east-asian: full-width or font-feature-settings: 'fwid' CSS properties, or by using Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms Unicode code points.

Like monospace fonts, fullwidth characters occupy the same horizontal space regardless of their natural width.

Unlike true monospace fonts, full-width only affects certain characters (mainly ASCII character set letters, numbers, and punctuation), so it doesn't guarantee that all characters in the text will have the same width.

        font-variant-east-asian: full-width
      

This is the Source Han Serif font.
ハローワールド

Some fonts also support a halfwidth variant, rendered by either enabling the font-feature-settings: 'hwid' CSS property, or by using Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms Unicode code points.

        font-feature-settings: 'hwid'
      

This is the Source Han Serif font.
ハローワールド

Fullwidth forms and halfwidth forms may have letterforms with different widths and shapes:

Standard

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Fullwidth

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Halfwidth

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

This table is also set in Source Han Serif and ignores the global stylesheet.

Type tester

❗ If you see dingbats, then the font is either unavailable on your platform or has failed to load.

Jump to: Fullwidth forms, Halfwidth forms

# Fullwidth forms

Show 'Hello, world!'

# Halfwidth forms

Show 'Hello, world!' font-feature-settings: 'hwid'

Form support table

Font	Platform	Fullwidth	Halfwidth

^[a] This is the article's <body> font stack. ⤣
^[b] A typical Latin font for comparison. ⤣
^[c] Note that Noto [Serif|Sans] JP is just the Google Font version of Source Han [Serif|Sans], but as it's a Google Font, doesn't include font-variant-east-asian: full-width / font-feature-settings: 'fwid' or font-feature-settings: 'hwid' . ⤣
^[d] Unlike all other listed fonts, Noto Serif|Sans JP's CJK characters remain fullwidth with the application of font-feature-settings: 'hwid'. Odd. ⤣