Deciding on an "officially recommended" format for furigana on JLU [duplicate]

Question

This question is closely tied to two previous questions:

• What is the correct approach to romaji, kana, and/or kanji in example answers?

• Is it possible to add support for Ruby tags or any other mechanism for Furigana?

However, I think it is important we reach a consensus on a specific aspect of these (and an answer to the above would probably not get the attention it needs).

Here is my suggestion:

How about officially recommending that people use exclusively: 漢字【かんじ】 or (if they must): 漢字{かんじ}, when providing furigana (or romaji reading) after a word in kanji/kana?

In the aforementioned questions, many different formats where suggested, including the slightly more common 漢字 (かんじ) or 漢字 [かんじ]. Let me explain why we should try to discourage their use and push for a limited number of furigana formats:

• From previous discussions, it appears that (), [], {}, 【】 are, by a large margin, the main formats used and preferred by JLU users.

• Most of you probably know about (and use) YOU's brilliant Ruby script. It currently offers inclusive support for all possible ruby conventions. The problem with () and [] is that they often do not indicate furigana... leading to some very annoying false-positives.

• Further down the line, it is reasonable to imagine SE integrating a very similar solution to the site (as an intermediate step, before even considering a Ruby tag in Markdown). If they do, I don't think we will want auto-conversion of all ()/[] to ruby (which would break many posts).

• {} and 【】, on the other hand, are fairly unambiguous and have practically no reason to be in a JLU post, other than to indicate furigana. Auto-parsing all {}/【】 in JLU and replacing them by ruby, has very little chance of breaking things.

• Restricting choices to only two options (albeit purely as an "official recommendation": I am not advocating the flogging and banning of users who choose to use something else) means more simplicity and greater uniformity for new users. {} is pure ASCII, and easy to type for anybody, 【】 looks nicer (and is maybe even less ambiguous), but slightly harder to type for beginners, so having both covers all bases nicely.

• If we agree on such a convention, it would be rather easy to go back and edit titles/posts to replace previous uses of other formats and make JLU fully compatible with a furigana auto-parser (whether YOU's or a built-in SE one).

Note: Of course, a more complete format such as [漢字] {かんじ} etc. would be even less ambiguous and more parser-friendly (ideal for a Markdown format), however, it has the major drawback of not degrading nicely (i.e. doesn't look good at all without parsing). Plus, it would be a lot harder to get new users to use it immediately... So I vote for simplicity until SE provides support for such a tag at the Markdown level.

So what do you think? Does anybody oppose the idea of adding an official recommendation to the FAQ and generally encouraging this convention through JLU? Any reason not to?

Edits/Updates:

• Amended suggestion to highlight the preference we give to 【】 over {}

• To be clear: this suggestion is not about using more furigana, or adding furigana to full sentences (something which would require actual ruby tag support to be done correctly). It is about the best way to format current use of furigana: mostly small words and titles.

• Regardless of issues of ambiguity/parsability, I hope it will be clear that the central argument in favour of a unified format for furigana is (human) user comfort. Like any other arbitrary convention, the goal of this one is to ensure a bit of consistency in presentation. I am much less attached to which format is picked than the idea of picking one and sticking to it. The current hodgepodge is not serving anyone.

Answer 1

I'd go for dictionary convention:

漢字【かんじ】

For reference, 【 and 】 are usually offered as conversions for [ and ] in most IMEs.

Personally I find 漢字{かんじ} highly unreadable and annoying, but it may be used as a fallback.
漢字 {かんじ} (separated by a space) is recommended in this case.

Answer 2

Until Japanese.SE supports furigana tags, I think people should use whatever they're comfortable with using/whatever looks best for them. After that, this question will be moot, after all.

I don't think we should be optimizing for people running YOU's script. Remember, no new user is going to be running it!

Answer 3

With the recent embedding of YOU's script, this is an example of what a post can look like:

---

This is what the post looks like behind the scenes:

Answer 4

First, I'm not sure where the best place to put this is, so I'm putting it as an answer to this post. If it is better somewhere else, mods feel free to migrate it.

My concern about this format is how it is parsing the furigana in placing it over the kanji. For now it seems like it's just taking everything in the tags and putting it over the associated kanji. While this works right most of the time, my concern is for beginners using the site. Namely, it would be nice to make a clear distinction between "normal" furigana (where each kanji has an explicit subset of the furigana indicated) and "ateji" furigana, where the furigana is applied as a whole to the accompanying kanji.

For example, 漢字 is a "normal" instance where kan and ji are for each separate letter. Here are two ways to input it: 漢字【かんじ】 and then 漢【かん】字【じ】. My preference (and more correct notation for a beginner) would be the latter because you can clearly see the breakdown of the reading. However, to get it to look this way, I had input it as 漢【kan】字【ji】 (obviously with kana in the brackets). This is clearly a cumbersome way to input furigana, i.e., separate brackets for each "segment" of the reading.

On the other hand, 火傷【やけど】 is a 熟字訓 kanji, where the reading isn't broken down per kanji, but applied blanketly to the whole set of kanji. I wouldn't want a beginner to think it was 火【や】傷【けど】 or 火【やけ】傷【ど】 when this isn't the case.

Now some of you may think this is unnecessary, but I think it could be solved as a simple matter of formatting. I propose putting a delimiter into the "normal" words to denote how they should be parsed out. For example, 漢【かん】字【じ】 could be input as 【かん・じ】, or 日【に】本【ほん】語【ご】 as 【に－ほん－ご】. I would propose that delimiters could be any of {, . / - 、 。 ・ ／ －}.

This might slightly increase the width of the "normal" words to clearly indicate the correct breakdown (especially for kanji with long readings, like 力【ちから】強【づよ】い), but I think overall it would benefit those using the furigana feature.

Suggestions and comments?

Answer 5

Ok, we've had furigana for a while, and here's my opinion:

*Do not use them*

They are of course welcome when we're dealing with hardcore readings, maybe proper nouns and other fantasies, but I reckon that they should be avoided at all cost for common words. If one wants to know how to read "人", install a damn rikaichan!

Rationale: it's just a pain to read overcharged text full of crappy useless information that cannot even be non-intrusively hidden.