BIZ UDGothic

Fill in a Japanese form set in BIZ UDGothic and every kana sits in its own square, the same width as a kanji. That full-width setting is what separates this font from its sibling BIZ UDPGothic, which gives the kana proportional widths for running text. Here the characters line up in columns, which is what a timetable, a spreadsheet or a printed application form wants.

Morisawa and TypeBank built the BIZ UD family on universal design, after a lot of testing with end users, with 2 aims in mind: each character easy to tell from the next, and a whole text easy to read. To that end the kanji drop 2 details. The hane, the hook at the end of a stroke, is gone where it can go, and so is the geta, the short vertical that pokes below the bottom stroke. Counters were adjusted so the large characters keep their balance. The kana run a little smaller than the kanji, and Morisawa says this gives a long text in the lighter weight an easy rhythm.

Google Education noted that it lines up with the fonts most used in Japanese educational publishing, and when it came to Google Fonts it went into Google Workspace too.

Regular and Bold only. 11,741 characters in each, Latin, Greek and Cyrillic included, and a slashed zero that keeps 0 and O apart in a customer number.