半角拉丁字母

[Ian_Lee]

Some Japanese-based websites, i.e. hotel, will ask customers to input their names by 半角拉丁字母 (half corner Latin alphabet) on their Chinese websites after making reservation. Does anyone know what is 半角拉丁字母?

[zhwj]

This refers to the "byte-case" of the latin characters - full-width vs. half-width.

全角：ｆｕｌｌ－ｗｉｄｔｈ，　ｄｏｕｂｌｅ－ｂｙｔｅ　（ＤＢＣ　ｃａｓｅ）

半角:half-width, single-byte (SBC case).

I imagine some sites request half-width characters since their systems aren't equipped to manipulate strings of double-byte latin text - to do comparisons and indexing and such.