Writing & spelling · 3 min
What changes in vertical writing
Japanese is still written top to bottom. Change the direction and small kana and the long-vowel mark move with it.
Where vertical writing survives
Japanese uses both horizontal (横書き) and vertical (縦書き) writing. Vertical runs top to bottom, with columns progressing right to left.
So a vertically set book opens from what an English reader calls the back. If a manga seems to start at the wrong end, it does not — you do.
Novels, newspapers, manga, letters and calligraphy are usually vertical. Among textbooks, Japanese language is vertical while maths and science are horizontal. The web and business documents are almost entirely horizontal.
What moves when the direction does
| Element | Horizontal | Vertical |
|---|---|---|
| Small kana (ゃゅょっ) | lower left of the square | upper right of the square |
| Long-vowel mark ー | a horizontal line | a vertical line |
| Furigana | above the kanji | to the right of the kanji |
| Punctuation 。、 | lower left of the square | upper right of the square |
| Brackets and quotes | open and close left–right | open and close top–bottom |
Rotated, the long-vowel mark stops looking like the kanji 一 and becomes a vertical stroke. コーヒー set vertically shows two vertical lines.
Numbers and Roman letters
Arabic numerals and Latin letters inside vertical text are handled a few ways.
A single digit sits upright, one per square. Two or more digits are either turned on their side or packed into one square together — a treatment called tatechūyoko (縦中横).
Which is why vertical novels often just use kanji numerals instead: 三十五 rather than 35. It sidesteps the problem.
What a learner needs from this
At the kana stage there is nothing to drill. The characters themselves are identical.
But you will meet it the moment you open a manga or a novel. All you need to remember is: start at the top right, read down, then move left.
Knowing that small kana shift position helps too — you will not be thrown by a small っ sitting at the upper right.