Typography rules to ensure Vietnamese diacritics are always correct and beautiful.

Many Vietnamese brands choose fonts because they look good in Latin samples, only to discover misaligned accents, overlapping diacritics, and misplaced tonal marks when typing in Vietnamese. This stems from a lack of clear type system rules, not from the designer's fault on specific pages. Type system rules in brand standards exist to prevent such errors from occurring in the first place.

Conditions not to be overlooked when choosing a font

Before discussing hierarchy or font size, you need to verify one thing: does that font fully support Vietnamese diacritics? Vietnamese uses a system of tonal marks and diacritics that overlay vowels, creating combinations like "ộ", "ướ", "ặ". Many foreign fonts only have basic European characters, completely lacking these combined characters. When absent, the system will borrow marks from a different character set, causing spacing and positioning issues that lack aesthetics.

The three types of accents that need the most careful checking are the tonal marks (â, ê, ô), the hook marks (ă, ơ, ư), and the combined heavy marks (ộ, ượ, ặ). The simplest way to check: type a regular Vietnamese text in that font before finalizing it.

The quality of font selection is a criterion from the outset, not something to fix later.

Practice Vietnamese typography, Sinh Vũ

The hierarchical letter structure in law.

Once the required font is selected, the type rules need to define the hierarchy of usage. Each level serves a different reading function and needs to be specified in terms of size, weight, and context of use. Typically, a standard set requires at least three levels:

• Heading: Used for major section titles, banners, page titles. Large size, often using a heavier font or the same font in a higher weight.
• Body: used for long texts, main content. Medium size, prioritizing readability over aesthetics. This is the most read level, so Vietnamese punctuation needs to be checked very carefully.
• Caption / Label text: used for annotations, labels, and secondary information. Small size requires careful consideration of clarity at small dimensions, especially with overlapping text.

Both Frontify and Kedraco note that the standards need to list approved fonts along with hierarchy, size, and usage for each platform to maintain consistency across all digital and print products.

The number of fonts and alternative fonts.

In addition to the primary font, the typography rules need to specify a fallback font (the font displayed when the primary font cannot be installed in the environment). This is a point that many standards overlook. When sending Word, PowerPoint, or PDF files through machines that do not have the font installed, the operating system automatically selects a default font, which often disrupts alignment, line breaks, and overall layout.

Common errors when creating a type system

• Choose fonts that look good in Latin samples without checking Vietnamese accents. Errors only reveal themselves when the team starts typing real content.
• No alternative font is specified, leading to documents opening on different machines with completely altered fonts and disrupted layouts.
• Use too many fonts without clear role assignments, making the publication look inconsistent even though each page is beautifully designed on its own.
• Not distinguishing between commercial use licenses and web use: some fonts allow printing but not embedding in websites or applications.

The viewpoint of Sinh Vũ

Sinh Vũ delivers typography rules so that text maintains a consistent reading rhythm across all departments and platforms. In the Vietnamese market, using diacritics is not a minor technical detail but a fundamental condition for brand text to appear professional. A beautiful font with misaligned diacritics will cause readers to pause at the error instead of reading the message.

If the font you want to use requires a license purchase, that is a reasonable cost to include in the brand budget. Sinh Vũ advises on suitable options for each budget level, including free fonts with commercial licenses and good Vietnamese diacritics if needed.