Vertical Orientation
Vertical Orientation is a character property that defines how a glyph should be rotated or positioned when displayed in vertical text layouts, such as those used for East Asian scripts like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. It assigns each character a value indicating whether it should remain upright (as in horizontal writing), rotate 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise, be mirrored, or transform into a special vertical form. This ensures proper reading order and visual consistency when text runs top to bottom, with punctuation, brackets, and Latin letters handled distinctly from ideographic characters. The property primarily affects rendering engines, aiding in the correct display of mixed-script content in vertical typography.
- Abbr
- U
- Count
- 286705
Upright is displayed unchanged in both horizontal and vertical text, with no rotation or substitution.
- Abbr
- R
- Count
- 23422
Rotated is when a character’s glyph must be turned 90 degrees clockwise to display correctly in vertical text, unlike upright or transformed.
- Abbr
- Tu
- Count
- 163
Transformed Upright is used when a character is rotated in vertical text, then additionally reshaped or replaced with a different glyph.
- Abbr
- Tr
- Count
- 51
Transformed Rotated is a code point’s display orientation, altered by shaping or styling, that overrides its default vertical rotation.