[4] There are two different principles for processing variant characters: One is conforming to the customs and simplicity.
"Conforming to the customs" means discarding the rare and retaining the familiar, and choosing glyphs that are more popular in society.
The other principle is to follow the original form and meaning, based on the character creation method and etymology, especially Shuowen Jiezi.
[5] Mainland China mainly adopts the principle of "conforming to customs and simplicity" in processing variant characters.
In Taiwan, processing of variant characters is mainly based on the original meanings and forms.
For example: [5] The advantage of considering the original meaning and form is to respect the historical tradition and the rationales of character formation.
According to the principle of following the common and simple, one character from each group was selected as the correct (or standard) form, and the rest are eliminated.
In January 1965, the Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Reform Commission of PRC issued the "Joint Notice on Unifying Chinese Character Glyphs" and issued the "印刷通用汉字字形表" (General Chinese Character Forms for Printing), "字形表" (Font Table) in short, asking all places to gradually implement it.
[14] The advantages of "Font Table" include: Standardized the different forms of each character to eliminate glyph confusion.
In China mainland, there is the List of Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters (通用规范汉字表), issued by the State Council on June 5, 2013.
The standard adopted by the Hong Kong education sector is the List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters (常用字字形表 ).
In addition, there are the list of Jōyō kanji for Japan, and the Kangxi Dictionary (de facto) for Korea.
The criteria for judging rare characters in place names are: [18] The principles for choosing replacement characters are: [19] [20] From March 1955 to August 1964, 35 place names of county level or above were changed with the approval of the State Council.
External documents and trademarks of export goods that have been registered in foreign countries do not need to be changed."