First, the literal size of Song style is larger than that of regular script and imitation Song style of the same specification, which is convenient for the Shu Lang arrangement of strokes.
There is a principle in the calligraphy and painting teaching and basic skills training of Songti characters, which is called "all" (word range wireframe), that is, to make the strokes of the characters as long as possible within the specified font range. Handwritten regular script, although the characters with many strokes can be written larger, should not be too large, which will affect the size coordination between words and the neatness of word arrangement, especially the calligraphy works of regular script and official script, and more attention should be paid to the planning of articles. Under this artistic standard, China's regular script has formed the writing rules and artistic style of "tightening in the middle palace". The "contraction in the middle palace" of regular script and the "enlargement and fullness" of Song typeface make the same Chinese character occupy a larger area than regular script in the same font square (it is called font size in printing engineering, and the font size of No.5 is 3.69 mm) (it is called face value in printing engineering, and the face values of different characters vary with the brushwork, so the collocation and coordination between different characters should be considered when typesetting "movable type". (Because online papers can't express graphics and can't use other fonts, readers can compare and test the literal sizes of five commonly used text fonts on their own computers. )
Although the imitation Song-style characters are also drawn according to the principle of "fullness", the horizontal painting of the characters is slightly inclined, which makes the space for free distribution of strokes smaller than that of Song-style characters; The slender strokes of imitation Song Dynasty also make the literal size of words smaller than Song Dynasty, so as to obtain aesthetic feeling and coordination.
The font style of Songti makes its literal size larger than that of regular script and imitation Song. The strokes of the font are arranged in Shu Lang, and the clarity of the font is higher than that of regular script and imitation Song.
Second, the dialectical unity of stroke spacing and stroke thickness
As far as literal size is concerned, the size of boldface is the largest, but the boldface has thick strokes and small stroke spacing, and the clarity of characters with many strokes is not as good as that of the other four fonts. Therefore, in the printed text with No.5 or No.5 as the main text, it is rare to print the full text in bold, while several other text fonts can be used for full-text printing. As far as the whole Chinese character symbol system is concerned, in a word, the number of horizontal strokes is more than that of vertical strokes. In the Tang Dynasty, Ou Yangxun's regular script took this feature of the Chinese character system into account, with slightly longer characters and thinner horizontal strokes. Engraving in the Ming Dynasty is also popular because of this feature of European characters. Later, in the Song Dynasty, the horizontal painting was simply carved fine, and the vertical painting as the "pillar" of the font structure was made thick. This stroke style of horizontal thin and vertical thick not only dialectically solves the clarity of the fonts with many horizontal drawings, but also enhances the sense of structural stability of the fonts with thick vertical drawings. Although the font used in modern printing reduces the sturdiness of vertical painting, it still maintains the basic style of horizontal fine and vertical thick, and maintains the advantages of clear strokes and strong sense of font stability. Moreover, the title is in Song style and the vertical painting is still very prominent and heavy.
Printing regular script should keep the artistic style of regular script with brush, and the strokes of falling paper with brush should be thicker than the song style drawn with ruler. In addition, with the tightening of Chinese brushwork, the gap between lines is smaller than that of Song Dynasty, and the clarity is not as good as Song Dynasty. The strokes of imitation Song characters are even and thin, and the clarity is better than that of Song, but not as steady and delicate as Song. It is mostly used to print poems, single papers or administrative documents, and the font size is mostly small four or four, especially in the previous mechanical Chinese typewriters, when printing administrative documents, it is generally equipped with four steel characters. This habit of printing administrative documents in imitation of Song Dynasty No.4 continues to the WORD office operation of computers today. The space per unit area of the fourth word is smaller than that of the fifth word. It is also objective that officials and clerks who read official documents in organs at all levels need bigger words when they are older.
3. Songti font is beneficial to font design and industrialized production.
The horizontal and vertical painting directions of the Song Dynasty are straight, the strokes are even in thickness, and the decoration of the ends and corners of the strokes is also a mechanical geometric pattern. Therefore, when designing glyphs, the large skeleton of Songti is easy to outline and draft, and it is also beneficial to use drawing tools such as rulers to assist the design. Because of this glyph feature, in the historical stage of lead type typesetting, the mathematical description and processing of the horizontal and vertical paintings of Song typeface are more convenient than regular script. The convenience of this technology makes Song Ti not only easy to design, but also easy to manufacture, thus forming different styles and genres in the same type of font. For example, Song Integration, Ci Hai and Chinese Dictionary all use glyphs; Song Erti, Mao Xuan horizontal edition, sixty-four folio words; 6 1- 1, People's Daily. In recent years, the computer typesetting Yasong Bo designed by Founder Font Designer of Peking University has been used in more than ten provincial and municipal newspapers such as Beijing Evening News, National Business Daily, Jilin Daily and Harbin Daily. Preface to Lanting Collection was adopted by Guangzhou Daily, Founder Daily of Peking University and other newspapers.
1956 after the public-private partnership, Chinese mainland printed regular script fonts uniformly produced copper fonts in the whole country, and only two regular script fonts were kept. In the previous printing font design competitions from 65438 to 0960, although many new regular script fonts won the competition prize, it is difficult to convert them into practical fonts. Because as a contestant, carefully writing a set of fonts stipulated in the competition and writing a set of fonts that meet the actual needs according to this artistic style and carving them into bronze molds are two completely different artistic difficulties and workloads. However, in Japan, there are at least three types of lead movable type fonts, which are called "Qing Dynasty style", "textbook style" and "regular script style".
The font design and manufacture of bold characters are also easier than handwritten fonts based on calligraphy art, but for a long time, bold can only be used as an emphasis font to attract readers' special attention. With the support of computer technology, the thickness of font strokes can be changed, making the application of bold characters more flexible.
Fourth, the widespread use of Song-style characters has formed a virtuous circle.
The font of Songti characters is familiar to editors of books and newspapers, as well as readers. In the long-term practice, aesthetic psychological habits and reading psychological habits have been formed. This psychological habit makes the layout editor consciously or unconsciously give priority to the use of Songti orthography. As a result, a psychological habit cycle of giving priority to the use of Songti characters has been formed:
Usage habits-giving priority to the use of Song typefaces-> reading habits-Song typefaces are read the most-> aesthetic habits-neat, dignified, rigorous, clear and easy to read-> The demand for Song typefaces in society is the greatest objectively-> In practical use, the fonts and glyphs of Song typefaces are the easiest to obtain->; Give priority to the use of Song fonts ...
This is a virtuous circle. In this cycle, the reading suitability of Songti characters has been continuously enhanced, and it has gradually accumulated from the aspects of font development, performance evaluation and aesthetic evaluation concept of Songti characters.
It is precisely because of this usage habit, reading habit and aesthetic psychology that Songti became the first printing font in industrialized printed books and newspapers.
Song-style characters have shown superiority in reading performance, technical performance and aesthetics. Songti is not only widely used in written documents, but also the font design of Songti has become the artistic basis of Chinese character drawing and design. With regard to the relationship between the inheritance and development of the beauty of printed Chinese characters, we will fully affirm the historical and practical functions of Songti characters.