Chinese Typography in Markdown: A Complete Guide

Chinese typography in Markdown presents unique challenges. Unlike Latin text, Chinese characters require careful handling of line breaks, punctuation spacing, and font selection. This guide covers everything you need to know.

The Challenge

Most Markdown renderers and PDF converters are designed with Latin text in mind. Chinese text can appear cramped, break at wrong points, or use incorrect punctuation spacing. Key issues include:

• Line breaking: Chinese text should break at character boundaries, not word boundaries
• Punctuation: Chinese punctuation (。，、：；) requires specific spacing rules
• Font mixing: Documents with mixed Chinese and English need proper font fallback
• Vertical metrics: CJK characters have different line height requirements

Best Practices

1. Font Selection

Use a font stack that includes both Latin and CJK fonts. Good options include:

• Noto Sans SC + Inter
• Source Han Sans + Source Sans Pro
• PingFang SC (macOS) + system fonts

2. Line Height

CJK text benefits from slightly larger line heights. A line-height of 1.75-2.0 works well for mixed-language documents, compared to 1.5 for Latin-only text.

3. Punctuation Prohibition Rules

In Chinese typesetting, certain punctuation marks cannot appear at the beginning or end of a line. This is called “kinsoku” rules. Professional PDF converters handle this automatically.

Tools That Handle CJK Well

SENTHUB is one of the few free online Markdown to PDF converters with proper Chinese typography support. It handles:

• Proper CJK font rendering with font fallback stacks
• Correct line breaking for mixed Chinese/English text
• Print-optimized PDF output for Chinese documents
• 100% client-side processing (your document privacy is protected)