English: Song, Mincho
Other names: Ming style, Ming Dynasty style, Jiangshi style
Appearance
Song style, is A Chinese character font that appeared to adapt to printing technology. The strokes vary in thickness, and are generally thin horizontally and thick vertically. There are decorative parts (i.e. "foots" or "serifs") at the ends. Strokes such as dots, strokes, strokes, and hooks have tips, and they belong to serif fonts. Commonly used for text layout in books, magazines, and newspapers.
Extended information
Historical origins
Since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Buddhism has experienced explosive growth in China, and the supply of scriptures has also increased day by day, so I wrote The profession of handwriting was born, and this style of calligraphy adapted to rapid copying was also called "copying style" by later generations
The source of the early engraving printing fonts in the Tang Dynasty was the copying style of the Tang Dynasty body. By the Five Dynasties, with the large-scale popularization of printing, the government gradually became the popularizer and standard setter of woodblock printing. The first woodblock printing of the Chinese classic book "Nine Classics" was produced by the government during the Five Dynasties.
By the Song Dynasty, woodblock printing ushered in a golden age. However, the engraving printing fonts at this time were not the Song style that became known later, but mostly the fonts of famous artists from the Tang Dynasty. The fonts on the board are also different in different regions. In Sichuan area, Yan Zhenqing's Yan body is often used to enter the board. In Fujian area, willow body is mostly used.
The font we call "Song Dynasty" began to gradually separate from calligraphy fonts in the Southern Song Dynasty, but it was only a transitional period between printing fonts and calligraphy fonts. Later generations called it "transitional imitation of Song Dynasty" Style" such as "Girl Fish Mysterious Poetry".
At this time, the "transitional imitation Song Dynasty" was a new type of printing font created for rapid engraving. For example, the closing strokes of horizontal strokes are designed as triangles that can be carved with two strokes of the knife, and the shape of many characters is very close to the Song style. In the Ming Dynasty, with the rapid development of printing technology, printing fonts finally formed the final version we call "Song Ti" today.
The origin of the name
The culture of the Song Dynasty was at its peak, and the Song engraved editions were exquisite and grand, with high collection value. Ming Dynasty literati, especially book collectors, highly praised "Song engraved editions", so The publishing industry in the Ming Dynasty often reproduced Song block editions, but for convenience and to reduce costs, these imitation Song editions of the Ming Dynasty often only engraved the "Fuguo characters" instead of the original Song characters with strong regularity.
The result was a font specifically designed for printing. In the 12th year of Kangxi (AD 1673), the court officials ordered the court officials to stipulate in the preface to the supplementary publication of Jing'an's "Wen Tong Kao": "From now on, when engraving books, all square scripts will be called Song style characters, and regular scripts will be called Ruan characters." This is where the name "Song Style" comes from.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Song Dynasty