international-typographylisted

# International typography The default assumption in every other skill is Latin script. That assumption is wrong for most of the world's readers, and it fails in ways that are invisible to a monolingual reviewer. ## 1. When to invoke - Any product supporting a non-Latin script, now or planned. - Bidirectional text (Arabic, Hebrew) mixed with Latin. - CJK, Indic, Thai, or vertical writing. - Layout breaking after localisation. - Building a font stack that must cover several scripts. **Always co-load for any non-English or multi-script product.** ## 2. Required context - **Every script** in scope, and any planned. - Whether text mixes scripts **within a line** (numerals, brand names, code). - Whether content is **user-generated** (you cannot predict the script). - Whether the font covers each script, or a **per-script stack** is needed. - Locale-specific conventions: numerals, quotation marks, date formats. ## 3. Invariant principles - **Latin typographic rules do not generalise.** The Latin axes are cap height, x-height, and baseline. Other writing systems have different points of focus: many **Indic scripts hang from a headline**; **Chinese characters gravitate to the heart** (a centred square); **Japanese characters occupy a square**; **Indic and Arabic emphasize horizontal flow.** (Lupton) - **"x-height" and "cap height" are meaningless in scripts without those features.** So is any rule derived from them, including much size- and leading-matching advice.