Ruby character

This article is about Ruby characters in the East Asian cultural sphere. For the programming language, seeRuby (programming language).For other uses, seeRuby (disambiguation).

Ruby charactersorrubi characters(Japanese:ルビ;rōmaji:rubi;Korean:루비;romaja:rubi) are small, annotativeglossesthat are usually placed above or to the right oflogographiccharacters of languages in theEast Asian cultural sphere,such asChinesehanzi,Japanesekanji,andKoreanhanja,to show the logographs' pronunciation; these were formerly also used forVietnamesechữ Hánandchữ Nôm,and may still occasionally be seen in that context when reading archaic texts. Typically called justrubyorrubi,such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader.

Examples

Here is an example of Japanese ruby characters (calledfurigana) forTokyo( "Đông Kinh"):

Hiragana	Katakana	Romaji	Hentaigana
Đông(とう)Kinh(きょう)	Đông(トウ)Kinh(キョウ)	Đông(Tō)Kinh(kyō)	Đông(𛁸𛀖)Kinh(𛀻ょ𛀖)

Mostfuriganaare written with thehiraganasyllabary, butkatakanaandromajiare also occasionally used. Alternatively, sometimes foreign words (usually English) are printed with furigana to provide the meaning, and vice versa. Textbooks sometimes renderon-readingswith katakana andkun-readingswith hiragana.

Here is an example of ruby characters forBeijing( "Bắc Kinh") in Zhuyin (a.k.a. Bopomofo),Xiao'erjing,and Pinyin.

Zhuyin	Xiao'erjing	Pinyin
Bắc(ㄅㄟˇ)Kinh(ㄐㄧㄥ)	Kinh(ڭٍ)Bắc(بِی)	Bắc(Běi)Kinh(jīng)

In Taiwan, the main syllabary used for Chinese ruby characters isZhuyin fuhao(also known asBopomofo); in mainland Chinapinyinis mainly used. Typically, unlike the example shown above, zhuyin is used with a vertical traditional writing and zhuyin is written on the right side of the characters. In mainland China, horizontal script is used and ruby characters (pinyin) are written above the Chinese characters.

Xiao'erjingis a Perso-Arabic Alpha bet, adopted byHui Muslimsand at times utilized as ruby characters in various manuscripts. This system does have its shortcomings, mainly that it has no way of indicating tones. With the spread of pinyin, the usage of this system has been in decline in the past decades. Most manuscripts that do mark the characters with Xiao'erjing, do so from right-to-left, which is quite unique, compared to other systems. This is because usually such manuscripts include Arabic texts such as the Quran, and the Chinese writing is the explanation or translation.

Books with phonetic guides (especially pinyin) are popular with children and foreigners learning Chinese.

Here is an example of the Korean ruby characters forKorea( "Hàn Quốc"):

Hangul	Romaja
Hàn(한)Quốc(국)	Hàn(Han)Quốc(guk)

Romaja is normally used in foreign textbooks until Hangul is introduced. Ruby characters can be quite common on signs in certain parts of South Korea.

Here is an example of the Vietnamese ruby characters (Chữ Quốc Ngữ) forHanoi( "Hà nội"):

chữ Quốc ngữ
Hà(Hà)Nội(Nội)

Chữ Hán characters are glossed with chữ Nôm and the Vietnamese Alpha bet.

Chinese characters and its derivations of it (chữ Hánandchữ Nôm) which was used by theVietnamesehave fallen out of use in favour ofLatin-based scriptchữ Quốc ngữduring the French colonial period when it was made a part of compulsory education (1920s onwards). Currently still used byGin people.

Uses

Ruby may be used for different reasons:

• because the character is rare and the pronunciation unknown to many—personal name characters often fall into this category;
• because the character has more than one pronunciation, and the context is insufficient to determine which to use;
• because the intended readers of the text are still learning the language and are not expected to always know the pronunciation or meaning of a term;
• because the author is using a nonstandard pronunciation for a character or a term

Also, ruby may be used to show the meaning, rather than pronunciation, of a possibly-unfamiliar (usually foreign) or slang word. This is generally used with spoken dialogue and applies only to Japanese publications. The most common form of ruby is calledfuriganaoryomiganaand is found in Japanese instructional books, newspapers, comics and books for children.

In Japanese, certain characters, such as thesokuon(Xúc âm) (littletsu,っ) that indicates a pause before the consonant it precedes, are normally written at about half the size of normal characters. When written as ruby, such characters are usually the same size as other ruby characters. Advancements in technology now allow certain characters to render accurately.

In Chinese, the practice of providing phonetic cues via ruby is rare, but does occur systematically in grade-school level text books or dictionaries. The Chinese have no special name for this practice, as it is not as widespread as in Japan. In Taiwan, it is known as "zhuyin",from the name of the phonetic system employed for this purpose there. It is virtually always used vertically, because publications are normally in a vertical format, and zhuyin is not as easy to read when presented horizontally.Where zhuyin is not used, other Chinese phonetic systems likepinyinare employed.

In academic settings, Vietnamese text written inchữ Hánorchữ Nômmay be glossed withchữ quốc ngữruby for modern readers.

Sometimesinterlinear glossesare visually similar to ruby, appearing above or below the main text in smaller type. However, this is a distinct practice used for helping students of a foreign language by giving glosses for the words in a text, as opposed to the pronunciation of lesser-known characters.

Ruby annotation can also be used in handwriting.

History

See also:Ruby (typography)

TheHunmin JeongeumEonhaeuseshanjaand smallhangulfor ruby to the lower-right of the hanja characters.

In British typography,rubywas originally the name for type with a height of 5.5points,which printers used for interlinear annotations in printed documents. In Japanese, rather than referring to a font size, the word became the name for typesetfurigana.When transliterated back into English, some texts rendered the word asrubi(a typicalromanisationof the Japanese wordルビ,instead ofルビー(rubī), the expected transliteration ofruby). However, the spelling "ruby" has become more common since theW3Cpublished a recommendation forrubymarkup.In the US, the font size had been called "agate",a term in use since 1831 according to theOxford English Dictionary.

HTML markup

In 2001, the W3C published the Ruby Annotation specificationfor supplementingXHTMLwith ruby markup. Ruby markup is incorporated into the XHTML 1.1 specification and in HTML5.

For browsers that do not support Ruby natively, Ruby support is most easily added by usingCSSrules that are available on the web.

Ruby markup is structured such that a fallback rendering, consisting of the ruby characters in parentheses immediately after the main text, appears if the browser does not support ruby.

The W3C is also working on a specific ruby module forCSSlevel 2, which additionally allows the grouping of ruby and automatic omission of furigana matching their annotated part.

Markup examples

Below are a few examples of ruby markup. The markup is shown first, and the rendered markup is shown next, followed by the unmarked version. Web browsers either render it with the correct size and positioning as shown in the table-based examples above, or use the fallback rendering with the ruby characters in parentheses:

	XHTML		CSS level 2
Markup	<ruby> Đông Kinh<rp>(</rp><rt>とうきょう</rt><rp>)</rp> </ruby>	<ruby> Bắc<rp>(</rp><rt>ㄅㄟˇ</rt><rp>)</rp> Kinh<rp>(</rp><rt>ㄐㄧㄥ</rt><rp>)</rp> </ruby>	<ruby> <rbc><rb>Chấn</rb><rb>り</rb><rb>仮</rb><rb>Danh</rb><rp>(</rp></rbc> <rtc><rt>ふ</rt><rt>り</rt><rt>が</rt><rt>な</rt><rp>)</rp></rtc> </ruby>
Rendered	Đông Kinh( とうきょう)	Bắc(ㄅㄟˇ) Kinh(ㄐㄧㄥ)	Chấn(ふ)り仮(が)Danh(な) By default, the code above will come to the effect below. To achieve this effect, you may need further CSS styling.
Unmarked	Đông Kinh (とうきょう)	Bắc (ㄅㄟˇ) kinh (ㄐㄧㄥ)	Chấn り仮 danh (ふりがな)

Note that Chinese ruby text would normally be displayed in vertical columns to the right of each character. This approach is not typically supported in browsers at present.

This is a table-based example of vertical columns:

Bình	ㄆ ㄧ ㄥˊ
Tử	˙ ㄗ

Complex ruby markup

Complex ruby markup makes it possible to associate more than one ruby text with a base text, or parts of ruby text with parts of base text.

Unicode

Main article:Specials (Unicode block)

Unicodeand its companion standard, theUniversal Character Set,support ruby via theseinterlinear annotationcharacters:

• Code pointFFF9(hex)—Interlinear annotation anchor—marks start of annotated text
• Code pointFFFA(hex)—Interlinear annotation separator—marks start of annotating character(s)
• Code pointFFFB(hex)—Interlinear annotation terminator—marks end of annotated text

Few applications implement these characters. Unicode Technical Report #20clarifies that these characters are not intended to be exposed to users of markup languages and software applications. It suggests that ruby markup be used instead, where appropriate.

The interlinear annotation characters are part of the "Specials" Unicode block:

Specials[1][2][3] Official Unicode Consortium code chart(PDF)
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
U+FFFx										IAA	IAS	IAT		�
Notes 1.^As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points 3.^Black areas indicatenoncharacters(code points that are guaranteed never to be assigned as encoded characters in the Unicode Standard)

ANSI

ISO/IEC 6429(also known asECMA-48) which defines theANSI escape codesalso provided a mechanism for ruby text for use by text terminals, although few terminals and terminal emulators implement it. The PARALLEL TEXTS (PTX) escape code accepted six parameter values giving the following escape sequences for marking ruby text:

• CSI0 \(or simplyCSI \since 0 is used as the default value for this control) – end of parallel texts
• CSI 1 \– beginning of a string of principal parallel text
• CSI 2 \– beginning of a string of supplementary parallel text
• CSI 3 \– beginning of a string of supplementary Japanese phonetic annotation
• CSI 4 \– beginning of a string of supplementary Chinese phonetic annotation
• CSI 5 \– end of a string of supplementary phonetic annotations

See also

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/China-related articles § Ruby characters,andFurigana(Japanese)
• Emphasis points,marks use foremphasis,which can be implemented similarly to ruby
• Harakat– vocalisedArabic scriptdiacritical marks that provide phonetic assistance for reading texts inArabic.
• Niqqud– vocalisedHebrew scriptvowel pointings that provide phonetic assistance for readingHebrew.(The Hebrewabjadrepresents only the consonants.)

Further reading

• Lunde, Ken(2009).CJKV Information Processing.Sebastopol, California:O'Reilly Media.ISBN978-0-596-51447-1– via Google Books.