Stacking two characters vertically in a table with no space between them

Question

This should be really simple, but I can't figure it out. So: how do I get these two characters to merge up in a table?

〳   1st row, U+3033 VERTICAL KANA REPEAT MARK UPPER HALF
〵   2nd row, U+3035 VERTICAL KANA REPEAT MARK LOWER HALF

Those are used in the vertical writing of Japanese, and they're supposed to look like a big version of U+3031 VERTICAL KANA REPEAT MARK 〱 when combined. But simply setting border-spacing, padding, collapse etc isn't enough, since there's still space above and below the chars themselves. Failed attempt:

<table style='border-collapse:collapse'>
  <tr><td>〳</td></tr>
  <tr><td>〵</td></tr>
</table>

So how do I squeeze the juice out of the text? I suppose the ideal answer would be to use 'real' vertical writing capabilities in a browser, but as far as I can tell this is still a utopian draft.

"Utopian Draft" I like that: +1. – Steve Wellens Dec 01 '11 at 02:28 — Steve Wellens, Dec 01 '11 at 02:28

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 01 '11 at 02:34

You need to also use border-spacing: 0;. That along with padding:0; will help. They should match, however, depending on the padding the actual font character has, you might have to use a div, and set the height/width so that it clips.

You might be better off with Div's, if you are simply trying to display the character.

http://www.gateshosting.com/test/slash.html

<div>
 <div style='border:0;padding:0;font-family:tahoma;font-size:15px;height:14px;'>/</div>
 <div style='border:0;padding:0;font-family:tahoma;font-size:15px;height:14px;''>\</div>
</div>

Surely there has to be a solution if you search for it on a Japanese blog or something.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 01 '11 at 02:34

0

If you can wrap them in a span, then this works http://jsfiddle.net/zdqvM/5/ and the shift seems to be correct even at higher font-size: http://jsfiddle.net/zdqvM/6/.

answered Dec 01 '11 at 02:34

ScottS

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Neither of those quite line up on my browser =/ – lambshaanxy Dec 02 '11 at 00:28
Oh well, they looked great on FF 8! – ScottS Dec 02 '11 at 01:45
FF8 here as well. May be fonts or something, I'm on OS X. – lambshaanxy Dec 02 '11 at 02:06
Ahh. I'm on Win7. Must be font's. Which probably proves the point that no matter what you choose, its not going to look right on somebody's computer. – ScottS Dec 02 '11 at 02:20

Stacking two characters vertically in a table with no space between them

2 Answers2