iWork Pages Celebrates International Haiku Day with Vertical Writing

Apple, Kumihan/Japanese Typography

Today is International Haiku Day and Apple Education is celebrating it in Japan with the new version of iWork Pages that finally supports vertical text layout. In honor of International Haiku Day and vertical text support in Pages, I tried writing a haiku in vertical text using the new version of Pages. This is how it went…

Let’s see, I want to rotate the roman characters to stand vertical like they do in traditional ‘Tate-Chu-Yoko‘ Japanese layout.
Oh wait, Pages vertical rotation only works in groups 2~3 characters. Anything less or more does’t work. How about if I split them up.
Okay this isn’t working, but I have an idea…
I’ll just use egword Universal 2 instead. Problem solved with the Tate-Chu-Yoko setting.

Update: Japanese reactions to the Apple Education ad (top screen shot) now running on Twitter are fun and sarcastic: “Are you serious? Way too late,” “Good thing I didn’t wait and installed egword,” “10 years too late,” “Oh, Pages is finally useable,” etc.

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