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Chinese Fonts
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| Font menu | Sample | Font name | Keyboards** | |
| DFKai-SB |  |
Simplified/Traditional Biaokaiti | PRC† | Taiwan |
| FangSong |  |
Simplifed/Traditional Fangsongti | PRC | |
| KaiTi |  |
Simplified/Traditional Biaokaiti | PRC | |
| Microsoft JengHei |  |
Simplified/Traditional Heiti | PRC† | Taiwan |
| Microsoft YaHei |  |
Simplified/Traditional Heiti | PRC | |
| MingLiU |  |
Traditional Xi Ming (Songti), monospaced*** | PRC† | Taiwan |
 _HKCS |
 |
— Hong Kong Supplemental Character Set | PRC | |
| _HKCS-ExtB |
 |
— HKCS extension B | PRC | |
| -extB |
 |
— extension B | PRC† | Taiwan |
| NSimSun |  |
Simplified Songti, monospaced*** | PRC | |
| PMingLiU* |  |
Traditional Xi Ming (Songti), proportional*** | PRC† | Taiwan |
| -extB |
|
— extension B | PRC† | Taiwan |
| SimHei |  |
Simplified/Traditional Heiti, proportional*** | PRC | |
| SimSun* |  |
Simplified Songti, proportional | PRC | |
* The highlighted fonts are the system defaults:
• PMingLiU for Taiwan keyboards
• SimSun for PRC keyboards.
This can be changed in the current document via your font menu, or permanently in the default settings for each application, however I don't recommend changing the overall default system font.
** Keyboards:
• PRC = MSPY and other "Chinese (PRC)" keyboards and their IMEs.
• Taiwan = MS New Phonetic and other "Chinese (Taiwan)" keyboards and their IMEs.
***"Proportional" vs. "monospaced" refers only to the Western characters and spaces included in these fonts. More about this below.
† Apparently what Microsoft means when they say these six fonts are "supported" by the PRC IME is not full support but display support. Even if you set the PRC IME to traditional character mode, if you try to type in these fonts you'll be bumped back into the default font (usually SimSun). So, you can really only select these fonts after you've typed the characters by going back to highlight them and choosing the font you want. Two more tips for you: in many applications you can make other "PRC" fonts your default font instead of SimSun, but you cannot do that with these traditional fonts, and also when using these fonts with the PRC IME if you copy your text into other applications or send to other people there may be some problems so please experiment a little first before relying on them.
Minority Fonts
In your font menu you should also find Chinese minority language fonts for Yi (Yi Baiti), Tibetan (Microsoft Himalaya), Uighur (Microsoft Uighur) and Mongolian (Mongolian Baiti). I am not planning to cover these in detail here.
Default Chinese Fonts
When you select a Chinese input method and start typing, Windows 7's default fonts will be Songti: SimSum for simplified characters and PMingLiU for traditional. These are also the standard Chinese system fonts for filenames, menus and other UI text.
Song is the standard Chinese printing typeface, named after the Song dynasty when it may have originated. The names of these particular fonts are confusing because two different vendors developed the simplified and traditional fonts for Microsoft. "Xin"/"New" is proportional in one set but monospaced in the other.
The default fonts, SimSun and PMingLiU, are called proportional only because of the the Western characters and Western spaces contained in each font. This does not affect the Chinese characters themselves.
Examples of proportional English fonts you may be familiar with are Times and Arial. A monospaced, or non-proportional font, would be old versions of Courier, in which every letter takes up the same amount of space from side-to-side just like the output of a typewriter. Remember those?
Additional Fonts
There are many free and commercial third-party fonts you can add to your system. Click here for my survey of more Chinese fonts.
If you are working in education, I highly recommend the Dynafont TrueType 28 package described on my survey page. I own it because it includes Pinyin and Zhuyin ruby fonts. On my Zhuyin setup page I offer examples of those DynaComWare Pinyin and Zhuyin ruby fonts.
If you just want to display Pinyin with tone marks I have a free MS Word Pinyin macro for you. The macro page also explains which English fonts contain letters with Pinyin diacritics we need. Also, on my 3rd-party Chinese applications page I include a link to Pinyinput, a free IME that generates Pinyin with tone marks too.
