利用者・トーク:Dobasy
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A question
Hello Dobasy! I have a question about Japanese -- do Japanese speakers use italics? Do you ever see italics used in magazines, subtitles, store signs, etc. etc. ? And most importantly, should the wiki use italics? For example, on the 魚 page, at the top, there are 4 links to other relevant pages, and 3 use italics (the 4th does not). This confuses me as a native English speaker. I read wikipedia, and it says italics are never used in Japanese or Chinese, because it distorts the characters and can make them more difficult to read. What do you think?
Thank you very much! margotbean (トーク) 2022年5月24日 (火) 19:24 (UTC)
Hi Margotbean! Thank you for reaching me out. In Japanese, italics (or oblique type) are rarely used, and if used, it's mainly for aesthetics. In fact, they are shown as normal in Microsoft Edge (image) because the default sans-serif font, Meiryo, doesn't have italic glyphs. In the case of Wikipedia, italics are not recommended but not forbidden either (link: In Japanese, do not use italics too much. This is because some environments may not be able to display italicized text.). And for this wiki -- it doesn't matter much to me, but some might say it's less readable. If it's decided not to use italics, I have two concerns. First, since there are so many italicized text currently, fixing all of them is really painful (I don't think simple replacement would suffice -- some should be replaced to corner brackets "「」", others to normal text, maybe other cases I can't think of right now). Second, since most contents are translated from English, it's easy to use them unintentionally when someone add contents. That's all I think. Don't hesitate to let me know if you need anything! Dobasy (トーク) 2022年5月25日 (水) 05:18 (UTC)
- In case you are wondering, Firefox on Windows, Chrome and Firefox on Android do display italics. Dobasy (トーク) 2022年5月25日 (水) 05:27 (UTC)
- Well, that explains everything. Thank you very much for your thorough response! I don't think we need to do anything, if Japanese readers are generally not seeing italic/oblique characters, then it's not a problem. Anyone who wants to remove italics from a particular page can do so, of course. I always wondered why no one did so before. Now I know. They must be using Microsoft Edge. Thank you again! margotbean (トーク) 2022年5月25日 (水) 19:46 (UTC)