Fullwidth/Halfwidth Converter
Online fullwidth/halfwidth converter supporting bidirectional character width conversion
Background & Notes
What are Fullwidth and Halfwidth?
Fullwidth characters are a type of computer character where each fullwidth character occupies the space of two standard (halfwidth) characters.
A regular (halfwidth) character uses one byte of space (8 bits, 256 code points). Languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean require far more than 256 characters, so two bytes are used. Due to the writing habits of CJK scripts, using fullwidth characters also makes alignment more uniform.
To keep alignment, fullwidth versions of Latin letters and punctuation are also provided.
Chinese characters, the Latin characters defined as fullwidth, and various symbols and special characters in national standards are fullwidth. System commands generally do not use fullwidth characters; they are mainly used in text processing.
Most English letters, number keys, and symbol keys are halfwidth. Their internal representation is one byte, so commands and parameters are generally entered in halfwidth.
What is the difference between fullwidth and halfwidth?
- Fullwidth takes two bytes; halfwidth takes one byte.
- Fullwidth letters and numbers occupy the same width as Chinese characters.
- Halfwidth refers to ASCII-style characters; letters, numbers, and symbols typed without an IME are usually halfwidth.
- The fullwidth/halfwidth distinction mainly applies to punctuation: fullwidth punctuation takes two bytes, halfwidth punctuation takes one byte, while Chinese characters still take two bytes in either case.
Tip
If you need to switch fullwidth/halfwidth for your input method, click the round or crescent icon (🌕/🌙) on the IME floating bar.