Select the paragraphs you want to adjust in your vertical text frame.
Last updated on
Oct 25, 2026
Configure leading, rotation, spacing, and alignment for vertical East Asian typography.
Fine-tuning East Asian character formatting in vertical text layouts ensures readability and maintains traditional typographic standards for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean content.
These character-level formatting options apply to vertical text frames containing East Asian characters. Use these features to control spacing measurement methods, rotate mixed-width characters appropriately, create horizontal text blocks within vertical lines, adjust inter-character spacing, add inline annotations, and align characters of different sizes. Before using these options, you must enable East Asian type features in Illustrator preferences and select text formatted with an appropriate East Asian font.
For paragraph-level composition settings like line breaking rules and character spacing, see the Mojikumi composition article. To enable East Asian type options in Illustrator, see the East Asian type setup article.
- East Asian type options enabled in Illustrator preferences
- Text formatted with an East Asian OpenType font
- Vertical text frame created with the Type tool
Specify leading measurement method
Navigate to Window > Type > Paragraph to open the Paragraph panel.
Select the Paragraph panel menu icon and choose Top-to-Top Leading to measure spacing from the top of one line to the top of the next, or Bottom-to-Bottom Leading to measure from baselines.
Note
The leading option affects only how spacing is measured between lines, not the actual spacing amount. Top-to-Top Leading aligns the first line flush with the top of the bounding box, while Bottom-to-Bottom Leading creates space between the first line and the bounding box edge.
Rotate half-width characters
Select the vertical text containing half-width characters such as Roman letters or numbers.
Navigate to Window > Type > Character to open the Character panel.
Select the Character panel menu icon and choose Standard Vertical Roman Alignment to prevent individual character rotation.
By default, half-width characters rotate individually in vertical text. Applying Standard Vertical Roman Alignment keeps these characters upright as a group, which works well for acronyms and short English words within vertical Japanese text.
Create horizontal text blocks with Tate-chu-yoko
Select the characters you want to display horizontally within vertical text lines, such as numbers, dates, or short foreign words.
Navigate to Window > Type > Character and select the Character panel menu icon.
Choose Tate-chu-yoko from the menu to rotate the selected characters as a horizontal block.
Select Tate-chu-yoko Settings from the Character panel menu to adjust vertical position with the Up/Down field or horizontal position with the Left/Right field.
Adjust character spacing within the Tate-chu-yoko block by specifying a Tsume percentage or tracking value in the Character panel.
Tate-chu-yoko (also called Kumimoji or Renmoji) improves readability of dates, times, and numeric values in vertical text by presenting them horizontally within the vertical flow.
Adjust character spacing with Aki and Tsume
Select the characters requiring spacing adjustments with the Type tool.
Navigate to Window > Type > Character to open the Character panel.
To add space before a character, select a value from the Insert Aki Left dropdown, or to add space after a character, select from the Insert Aki Right dropdown.
To compress spacing between characters, specify a Tsume percentage value where higher percentages create tighter spacing.
Aki controls white space before or after individual characters, allowing precise spacing adjustments for punctuation marks and special characters. Tsume compresses the space between characters proportionally—specifying 50% Tsume (2bu) adds half a full-width space, while 25% Tsume (4bu) adds a quarter-width space.
Add inline annotations with Warichu
Select the text you want to format as a small inline annotation within the parent text.
Navigate to Window > Type > Character and select the Character panel menu icon.
Choose Warichu from the menu to enable the feature.
Select Warichu Settings from the Character panel menu and specify the number of lines in the Lines field.
Set the Line Gap value to control spacing between Warichu lines, and specify Scale as a percentage of parent text size.
Choose an alignment option to position Warichu characters relative to parent text.
Warichu reduces selected text to a smaller size and splits it across multiple horizontal or vertical lines within the parent text flow, making it ideal for pronunciation guides, translations, or explanatory notes.
Align mixed-size characters with Mojisoroe
Select the text containing different character sizes that you want to align consistently.
Navigate to Window > Type > Character and select the Character panel menu icon.
Choose an option from the Character Alignment submenu such as Roman Baseline, Em Box Top/Right, Em Box Center, Em Box Bottom/Left, ICF Box Top/Right, or ICF Box Bottom/Left.
Mojisoroe controls how smaller characters align to larger characters in the same line. In vertical text frames, "Top/Right" options align text to the right edge, while "Bottom/Left" options align to the left edge. ICF (Ideographic Character Space) alignment uses the average height and width dimensions defined by the font designer for ideographic characters.
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