What are the characteristics of Song Style in Chinese characters?

Song style, or Ming style, is a Chinese font that seems to be suitable for printing. China's woodblock printing appeared in the Song Dynasty. At that time, each edition of China's books was printed with two pages, and the plates were carved with rectangular boards. The board has a wood grain, which is generally horizontal. The carved horizontal lines are consistent with the wood grain and are relatively strong. But when the vertical line of lettering crosses the wood grain, it is easy to break. Therefore, the vertical lines of fonts are thicker and the horizontal lines are thinner. Even if the horizontal line is strong, the end is easy to wear, so the end is thicker. So there was a Song-style shape with thick vertical and thin horizontal lines and thick points at the end of horizontal lines.

Song style came into being in Song Dynasty, but it was not mature. Song Dynasty advocated imitating the styles of calligraphy, Liu Ti and European style. Until the Ming Dynasty, due to economic factors, Song Ti, which occupied a small space, gradually became popular. Due to the lack of artistic changes, this font was criticized as "craftsman-style writing" by Ming literati. Song Dong spread to Japan and was called Ming Ti by Japan. Nowadays, it has become the mainstream printing font in the cultural circle of Chinese characters.

After modern movable type printing was introduced to China, people in China have been used to reading books printed in Song Dynasty for more than 1000 years, so modern movable type also adopted Song Dynasty printing. Later, according to the rough style of western characters, rough imitation movable type was also created in Chinese character printing. At present, Song Ti, bold, imitation Song Ti and regular script have become the four main fonts in Chinese character printing.