Chinese and Pinyin/Zhuyin Ruby Fonts
Free and commercial Chinese fonts
beyond those included with Windows
Free: Adobe Source Han & Google Noto CJK
Offering as many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters as possible, along with Latin type specially designed to work beautifully in this set, these open source fonts were developed by experts at Adobe and Google in partnership with three font foundries in Asia and others in the community. They come in multiple weights and are available individually, in regional packages, or all together as one massive Pan-Asian collection.
Adobe Source Han Sans (黑體) and Adobe Source Han Serif (宋體) are on the Adobe Fonts website (search for "Source Han"), and can be downloaded and managed within the Creative Cloud app, or downloaded from GitHub. I use these in many desktop apps, including Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite.
The identical Google Noto CJK fonts can be downloaded from Google Fonts or Github, or for Google Docs and Slides just follow these instructions but in the "Fonts" box click on "Scripts" to select a language, and be aware that Noto Sans Traditional Chinese and Noto Sans Simplified Chinese are in the Google Fonts Library, but at this time Noto Serif Traditional Chinese and Noto Serif Simplified Chinese are available through the free Extensis fonts add-on. 
Free: Babelstone
The Babelstone project, created by renowned Sinologist, Tangutologist, Khitanologist, Jurchenologist, and Anglicist Andrew West, offers a comprehensive serif font (宋体/明體) with many hard-to-find Chinese and other East Asian characters, in the Unicode font BabelStone Han and an additional font beyond Unicode called BabelStone Han PUA. He passed away in 2025, but others may carry on.
Free: WangHan and FangZheng Ruby Fonts
The WangHan Zhuyin ruby fonts are in Traditional Kai (楷體) and Ming (明體) characters, with Bopomofo on the right. Download and install all four files for each style (eight total) so that you'll have the main font plus alternate pronunciations (poyin). (If that link disappears, try searching for "王漢宗48套字型" or "wanghan fonts" or "hanwang fonts".)
The FangZheng Pinyin ruby font is in Simplified Kai (楷体) characters, with Pinyin on top. This "collection" file will install six fonts starting with "FZKTPY" with all alternate pronunciations (poyin zi). Look for a "下载" button on that download page. You will need the free 7-Zip program or similar utility to extract from the ".rar" file. (If that link fails or disappears, try searching for "方正楷体拼音字库" or "FZKTPY".)
To use ruby fonts, just select one and start typing Chinese, or if you already have Chinese text in another font then select the text and choose a ruby font from the menu. When a Chinese character has more than one pronunciation (poyin zi), select that character and choose an alternate version of the same font from the font menu to change the ruby characters.
You can also use the Phonetic Guide in Microsoft Word for similar results, but there are limitations and many bugs. Phonetic Guide was ported from the Japanese version of Word long ago, in the late Nineties I think, and the Chinese version was never completely finished. For example, the last time I tried to move Bopomofo from the top to the side of some characters, the tones became incorrect!
Traditional+Pinyin ruby fonts, as well Traditional+Zhuyin and Simplified+Pinyin ruby fonts with more characters are available for purchase, as I'll explain below.
Ruby Fonts Available For Purchase
Below are examples of ruby fonts I purchased from DynaComware many years ago, when they were sold as part of a boxed CD-ROM set. Today they can be obtained online directly from Dynacomware. More are available from Arphic and probably others in a variety of download and cloud-based subscription options. Although you may not find ruby fonts in their online catalogs, if you contact them directly you will be offered many choices.

More Chinese Fonts Available for Purchase
« top |
Home / Windows 11
Pinyin Macros
Pinyin Macros FAQ
Chinese fonts
|