{"id":621,"date":"2007-01-05T15:05:22","date_gmt":"2007-01-05T07:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2007\/beijing-subway-signage-some-photos\/"},"modified":"2008-11-03T22:30:45","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T14:30:45","slug":"beijing-subway-signage-some-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2007\/beijing-subway-signage-some-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing subway signage &#8212; some photos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sonarchic sent in photos of some signs in the Beijing subway system. <\/p>\n<p>The typography for English and Pinyin is generally poor, as is common in China. <\/p>\n<p>There are several things in general I&#8217;d like to draw attention to: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: sans-serif;\">Everything is in a boring sans-serif.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>The letters are often set <span style=\"text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: -.1em; font-family: sans-serif;\">too close together<\/span> and occasionally <span style=\"text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.5em; font-family: sans-serif;\">too far apart<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>EVERYTHING IS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.<\/li>\n<li>The size of the English\/romanization relative to the Chinese characters varies, with the English text often too small. (The latter is increasingly a problem in Taiwan.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>OK, now to the photos.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/station_names.jpg\" alt=\"column-mounted list of station names along one particular Beijing subway line\" style=\"border-top: 1px dotted green; padding: 1em;\" \/><br \/>\nAbove: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>very tight tracking between most of the Roman letters, except around the letter I<\/li>\n<li>enormous (and incorrect) space after the apostrophes in &#8220;Tian&#8217;anmen&#8221; (which is, correctly, <a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/romanization\/hanyu\/apostrophes.html\">written with an apostrophe<\/a>, BTW) and &#8220;Yong&#8217;anli&#8221; (which should perhaps be written &#8220;Yong&#8217;an Li&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>yet the apostrophes in the time-to-station markings are not followed by enormous spaces<\/li>\n<li>failure to parse many words correctly, e.g., &#8220;L\u00f9&#8221; (&#8220;Road&#8221; \/ ?) should be written apart from the name of the road: <span class=\"py\">G?ch\u00e9ng L\u00f9<\/span> (???), not <span class=\"py\">GUCHENGLU<\/span>, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/line1_line2.jpg\" alt=\"sign hanging from the ceiling of a Beijing subway station, with arrows showing which way to different lines\" style=\"border-top: 1px dotted green; padding: 1em;\" \/><br \/>\nAbove:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>note different word spacing between &#8220;TO&#8221; and &#8220;LINE&#8221; than between &#8220;LINE&#8221; and the number<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/fuchengmen_large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/fuchengmen_changchunjie.jpg\" alt=\"click for larger image\" style=\"border-top: 1px dotted green; padding: 1em;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nAbove:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This should almost certainly be &#8220;Changchun Jie&#8221; (<em>jie<\/em> means &#8220;street&#8221;), not &#8220;CHANGCHUNJIE&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/exit_ceiling_sign1.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border-top: 1px dotted green; padding: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/exit_b_large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/exit_b_buildings.jpg\" alt=\"click for larger image\" style=\"border-top: 1px dotted green; padding: 1em;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nAbove:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>only Chinese characters identify this as the northeast exit (??? <span class=\"py\">D?ngb?i k?u<\/span>) <\/li>\n<li>uneven left margin for the English\/romanization<\/li>\n<li>very small English in relation to the Chinese characters<\/li>\n<li>clumsy letterspacing around capital I&#8217;s<\/li>\n<li>too much space after the period in JRJ.COM<\/li>\n<li>uneven spacing, as can be seen in the two uses of the word &#8220;insurance&#8221; <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/insurance_compared.gif\" alt=\"comparison of the sizes of the word 'insurance' on the same sign\" \/><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2007\/01\/no_loitering.jpg\" alt=\"stylized image of a person sitting on a stair, with the caption 'no loitering' in English and Mandarin\" \/><\/p>\n<p>further reading: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov\/\">Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices<\/a>, U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.richardcmoeur.com\/trafstuf.html\">Traffic Stuff<\/a>, at the Web site of Richard C. Moeur<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sonarchic sent in photos of some signs in the Beijing subway system. The typography for English and Pinyin is generally poor, as is common in China. There are several things in general I&#8217;d like to draw attention to: Everything is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2007\/beijing-subway-signage-some-photos\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,4,12,15,41,32,20,19,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beijing","category-china","category-chinese","category-chinese-characters","category-english","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-romanization","category-signage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1624,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}