Format Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text

You can enter text in many different languages, including several different writing systems for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, using the international keyboards available on your device. When you enable any of the Chinese, Japanese, or Korean keyboards on your mobile device, Pages provides some language-specific text-formatting features, including emphasis styles, list styles, and phonetic guides.

For best results, use these recommended fonts:

Important: The instructions below assume you’ve enabled at least one Chinese, Japanese, or Korean keyboard on your device. To enable international keyboards, open Settings on your device, tap General, tap Keyboard, then tap Keyboards and add a new keyboard.

Add Chinese, Japanese, or Korean emphasis marks

You can add emphasis marks that are commonly used with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text. For example, using a Chinese keyboard, you can apply Boten dots below or above the text, or a wavy underline. With Japanese text you can add plain dots or sesame dots.

  1. Switch your keyboard to a Chinese, Japanese, or Korean keyboard.

  2. Select one or more characters of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text, then tap Format button.

    If you don’t see text controls, tap Cell or Text.

  3. Tap an emphasis mark button.

    The formatting options depend on the current keyboard.

Use a Chinese, Japanese, or Korean list style

You can apply Chinese, Japanese, and Korean list styles (specifically, the bullet style or numbering system) to a list written in any language.

  1. Select the list items with the numbering or lettering you want to change.

  2. Tap Format button, then tap Text or Cell.

  3. Tap Bullets & Lists, then tap a list style.

    The formatting options depend on which keyboards are enabled.

Provide a phonetic guide alongside text

If you have a Chinese, Japanese, or Korean keyboard enabled for your Mac or iOS device, you can apply phonetic guides to words written in any language even if you don’t use any of these keyboards.

  1. Select the text.

    Don’t include any trailing paragraph breaks or punctuation in your selected text.

  2. Tap Phonetics.

    You may need to tap the right arrow until you see the Phonetics button.

    A phonetic guide appears with the selected text.

  3. To change the phonetic guide text, tap Guide in the Phonetic Guide list, then select other guide text, or type your own in the field at the top.

  4. Tap anywhere outside the phonetic guide to apply the text and close the guide.

Change or remove phonetic guide text

You can change the language of phonetic guide text or remove the text.

  1. Select the word with phonetic guide text, then tap it.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • Change the guide text: In the Guide Text list, select guide text in the language you prefer.

      The phonetic options presented depend on which keyboards are enabled.

    • Remove the guide text: Tap Remove Guide.

Use Chinese government standard font sizes

If you need to use the standard government sizes for text in your document, you can show these sizes along with point sizes in the font size menu.

  1. Set your iPad region to China—in Settings, tap General > Language & Region > Region > China, then tap Done.

  2. If your document was open when you changed this setting, close the document and reopen it.

  3. Tap Font size button above the keyboard, then tap a font size.

    The Font size button on the right side of the iPad keyboard with the font size menu open. Chinese government font sizes appear at the top of the menu with point sizes below.
SEE ALSOEnter text in another language