Reading left to right

[rblocher]

First off, I think the real reason we read left to right is that we write that way. That changes the question a bit. Looking at how left-handed people are forced to contort when they write, I had always assumed that we read from left to right because for right-handers, it's far easier to see what you're writing in relation to what's already written. Also if you're using a pen/pencil/stylus, you don't brush your hand over what's already written, thus you avoid smudging it. Obviously pens and pencils are much newer than written language, and I don't know what the earliest writers used, but even if you imagine using a hammer and chisel or a stick in the dirt, it seems easier to see what you're doing when you go left to right. Sorry lefties, that's my theory.

[storyguide3]

So according to this theory, the Hebrews, Arabs and fair nunbers of Asian people are left-handed, thus accounting for them writing (and reading) right-to-left? Hell, some of them even write top-to-bottom and right-to-left at the same time!

[bibliophage]

Welcome to the SDMB, rblocher.

A link to the column you're commenting on is appreciated. Providing one can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, being sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/93/is-there-a-physical-reason-we-read-from-left-to-right

[rblocher]

Yes, storyguide3, that's exactly what I meant.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Yes, storyguide3, that's exactly what I meant.

Then you're wrong. There is no evidence to connect right-to-left writing and left-handedness.

[John W. Kennedy]

However, it isn't that simple. A study of the writing instruments in use when L-R became fixed allows for dominant right-handedness alone to still remain a factor, because different instruments are held in different ways.

Off the top of my head, I believe most RtL scripts are traditionally written with a brush.

[glowacks]

It's quite possible that most languages that are written right to left started with a different system of writing. For those languages that had a choice after the invention of ink-based systems where the instrument was held in-line with the writing, they definitely would choose left to right writing, but how many such writing systems are there that fit that category? The real reason (for me) that "everyone" writes left to right is that Europeans do, and they're the ones who went on to colonize most of the rest of the world - where the incidence of writing preference appears to be somewhat random if not leaning towards the opposite direction.

[Irishman]

Regarding the sample boustrophedon text provided in the column, I have to say the alternating lines of text are especially tricky, given that not only is the letter order reversed, but the character direction as well - the characters are mirror images. Talk about something designed to give dyslexics a headache.

While I can parse out the words, especially with a little effort, it is not nearly as easy as scanning the words in a consistent order. Sure, I could probably get used to it. I can also read upside down to a fair degree. But that doesn't mean I want to. And it certainly would make handwriting more challenging. Not only to you have to learn all the letters in small and capitals forwards, but also versions of each backwards. And then add in print vs cursive. Yeah.

[md2000]

I thought Chinese went top to bottom? If so, does it really matter from a writing/hand-in-the-way issue whether successive columns are LtR or RtL? It's Japanese, isn't it, that's RtL?

I suppose the answer could also be, if the group or person that first created an ethnic group's writing had been lefthanded, then the result might be left-handed writing (that just doesn't sound right.... I mean good?) strictly from tradition.

if direction was arbitrary until a certain point, and the group was small that "called the shots", then one man's influence would count for a lot. If at the time they first started to write the scriptures, the high preist of the temple or the chief instrutor of scribes decided "this is how to write it" then ta-da! One jewish guy sets the torah handedness for millenia to come.

Reminds me of the story about the government map office. A friend who started working there found all the maps for the province were done in shades of yellow, orange, and red and brown. Turns out the boss of the department was blue-green colour blind.

[DSYoungEsq]

I suppose the answer could also be, if the group or person that first created an ethnic group's writing had been lefthanded, then the result might be left-handed writing (that just doesn't sound right.... I mean good?) strictly from tradition.

if direction was arbitrary until a certain point, and the group was small that "called the shots", then one man's influence would count for a lot. If at the time they first started to write the scriptures, the high preist of the temple or the chief instrutor of scribes decided "this is how to write it" then ta-da! One jewish guy sets the torah handedness for millenia to come.
The trouble with this concept is that, with the obvious exception of the Cyrillic alphabet, most alphabets were not the result of anyone man or group of men. They were things which evolved over millenia of writing by the speakers of a given language. So unless left-handedness is a dominant trait in those areas, handedness is not the explanation for RtL over LtR horizontal writing.

I would venture to say that the direction of writing for most ethnic groups was already established before that group started using pen/pencil and paper. Incision in stone, impression in clay, etc. usually pre-date paper writing. For those cultures which adopted another writing method and alphabet, the direction will have had more to do with the cultural reasons for the adoption. For example, the Scandanavians eventually adopted Latin letters and writing, not, I expect, because it was easy to write it right-handed, but because that's what most of Europe used already.

[TBG]

Regarding the sample boustrophedon text provided in the column, I have to say the alternating lines of text are especially tricky, given that not only is the letter order reversed, but the character direction as well - the characters are mirror images.

Yeah I don't think I'd really have a problem with it if the "backwards" lines still used "forwards" letters, but those mirror letters just throw me off. Mainly because of letters that are direct mirrors of other letters, "b" and "d" being most notable.

[EdwardLost]

... if you imagine using a hammer and chisel or a stick in the dirt, it seems easier to see what you're doing when you go left to right.

I would envision a right-hander hammering with the right hand holding the chisel angled to the right in the left hand. Moving right to left would seem pretty natural. And the stone dust would fly away from your already-written text.

The ink-smearing problem seems to be pretty overwhelming for people writing with pens and resting their hand on the paper. (I recently saw a period copy of the Magna Carta and was amazed at how small and fine the letters were; the writer would really have needed to steady his hand on the paper and be able to see the text clearly.) I think a R2L culture would be pretty motivated to switch to L2R after adopting pen and ink. Makes me think of the left-handed Leonardo da Vinci using mirror writing in his notes - he probably did it to keep from smearing his ink.

I think Chinese was traditionally written with a brush with the hand not touching the paper, so there would not be the ink-smear problem. I'd like to hear from Chinese writers: Which way do you write when using a pen? I'd also like to hear from (right-handed) Arabic and Hebrew writers: What are your cultures' traditional writing tools and how do you handle writing R2L with pen and ink?

I remember reading that cuneiform was mostly written on palm-held clay tablets, continuously twisting both the tablet and the reed around to get the differently angled wedges. It seems like there would not have been any strongly preferred direction of writing.

[tbarrie]

On an unrelated note, are old answers frequently updated without this fact being acknowledged in the text? It was a bit jarring to read an off-hand reference to Linux software in an article from 1976.

[dotchan]

Speaking of writing from left to right, I believe that practice was started by the Sumerians, who did it so they wouldn't smear the still-wet clay tablets as they were scribing.

Not so sure of why right-to-left writing became popular in China. The individual characters themselves are approximately written left to right, top to bottom in terms of stroke order (with a few exceptions).

[kipod]

I'd also like to hear from (right-handed) Arabic and Hebrew writers: What are your cultures' traditional writing tools and how do you handle writing R2L with pen and ink?


Well, we mainly use keyboards.

But, for the last who-knows how many centuries/milenias, the bible was copied again and again using a feather and ink:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ktav_Stam

[BigT]

On an unrelated note, are old answers frequently updated without this fact being acknowledged in the text? It was a bit jarring to read an off-hand reference to Linux software in an article from 1976.

Yes. All the time, actually. Columns are often updated to make them relevant to today's readers, and occasionally whenever Cecil says something that would be completely out of character for him now. Oh, and factual errors are sometimes addressed in this manner, but if they are even remotely significant, Cecil is usually good about letting us know he messed up.

[Stealth Potato]

Regarding the sample boustrophedon text provided in the column, I have to say the alternating lines of text are especially tricky, given that not only is the letter order reversed, but the character direction as well - the characters are mirror images. Talk about something designed to give dyslexics a headache.

Yeah, that was tricky, but once I got used to it I immediately noticed how comfortable it was to be able to continue from the same position rather than snapping my eyes back to the left-hand margin at the end of each line. I think those ancient Greeks were on to something. :p

[EdwardLost]

Well, we mainly use keyboards.

But, for the last who-knows how many centuries/milenias, the bible was copied again and again using a feather and ink

So you don't use pens and pencils nowadays, and we probably don't know how the ancient scribes held their quills - but how about somewhen in between? How did right-handed Hebrew or Arabic writters take notes in class in the 1960's? Did they twist their hands around like a left-handed English writer would do?

[John W. Kennedy]

Someone taking notes in Hebrew in the 1960s would have used cursive Hebrew, not the Square Letters that have been used for formal Hebrew writing for the last 2000 years or so. (Older Hebrew looked rather like Archaic Greek.)

Torah scrolls are still written by hand.

[Exapno Mapcase]

A fortuitous find from the pages of Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature, by Marcus Du Sautoy (http://www.amazon.com/Symmetry-Journey-into-Patterns-Nature/dp/0060789417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243441111&sr=8-1).
Interestingly, irrespective of whether the language is written from right to left, left to right or top to bottom, mathematical equations always begin at the left and flow to the right.

[md2000]

A fortuitous find from the pages of Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature, by Marcus Du Sautoy (http://www.amazon.com/Symmetry-Journey-into-Patterns-Nature/dp/0060789417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243441111&sr=8-1).

This is like the question - why do clocks run clockwise? they didn't all used to - in the "good old day" it was 50-50 which way. Typically, the rubes in the sticks take their cue from how the local "center of fashion" does it. If Paris or London has a big clock that does it this way, then everyone will copy it. If Rome did it this way, the churches will usually copy Rome, etc.

This is why the comment about the Torah and scholars. In an ancient promised land of a few tens of thousands, how many are literate? A thousand? How many of those are at the center of learning, not some scribe out in the sticks? A few hundred? The left-handed clumsy writer in charge of Torah school one generation could just decide "I'd rather do right-to-left than this awkward back-and-forth".

If he lorded it over a generation or two of budding scholars and gave them no choice, in the days of unquestioned authority and petty bureaucrats, one guy could set the style for millenia to come.

Or if some greek guy decided to start chiselling the quotation on the temple of the biggest shrine in the area as LtR; everyone then copies that direction and he's set the direction of Greek writing for the next 3 millenia.

For example, I read somewhere that the original English bible before King James was done in the protestant Netherlands, since the catholic church was being somewhat touchy about letting the masses see and put their own interpretation on scriptures. Hence, the pronuciation with a dutch accent, "e-now-g-h" for "enuff" means that's how we spell "enough" nowadays and many other weird english spellings.

[John W. Kennedy]

A fortuitous find from the pages of Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature, by Marcus Du Sautoy (http://www.amazon.com/Symmetry-Journey-into-Patterns-Nature/dp/0060789417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243441111&sr=8-1).Interestingly, irrespective of whether the language is written from right to left, left to right or top to bottom, mathematical equations always begin at the left and flow to the right.Among Christian Arabs, at least, music is written left-to-right, so lyrics are written syllable-by-syllable left-to-right, but the syllables themselves are right-to-left.

[John W. Kennedy]

This is like the question - why do clocks run clockwise? they didn't all used to - in the "good old day" it was 50-50 which way. Typically, the rubes in the sticks take their cue from how the local "center of fashion" does it. If Paris or London has a big clock that does it this way, then everyone will copy it. If Rome did it this way, the churches will usually copy Rome, etc.Not so. Sundials in the northern hemisphere go clockwise, and clocks followed suit.

This is why the comment about the Torah and scholars. In an ancient promised land of a few tens of thousands, how many are literate? A thousand? How many of those are at the center of learning, not some scribe out in the sticks? A few hundred? The left-handed clumsy writer in charge of Torah school one generation could just decide "I'd rather do right-to-left than this awkward back-and-forth".

If he lorded it over a generation or two of budding scholars and gave them no choice, in the days of unquestioned authority and petty bureaucrats, one guy could set the style for millenia to come.

Or if some greek guy decided to start chiselling the quotation on the temple of the biggest shrine in the area as LtR; everyone then copies that direction and he's set the direction of Greek writing for the next 3 millenia.The entire near-eastern and middle-eastern tradition was to write right-to-left, and the earliest Greek writing, adapted from that of the people the Bible knows as the "Canaanites", was written right-to-left, too. Boustrophedon was an intermediate stage on the way to left-to-right.

For example, I read somewhere that the original English bible before King James was done in the protestant Netherlands, since the catholic church was being somewhat touchy about letting the masses see and put their own interpretation on scriptures. Hence, the pronuciation with a dutch accent, "e-now-g-h" for "enuff" means that's how we spell "enough" nowadays and many other weird english spellings.Arrggghhhh!


England was Protestant long before James VI/I. You may have heard of Elizabeth I, not to mention her brother Edward VI and her father Henry VIII.
MnE final "gh" generally descends from ME final yogh (ȝ), which generally descends from OE final "h", which was pronounced roughly like the "ch" in German "ich" or "ach". As the sound vanished from English, it moved in various directions, not always uniformly. For example, in novels written in the mid-18th century, or even later, rural characters often pronounce "through" as "thruf".

[John W. Kennedy]

Among Christian Arabs, at least, music is written left-to-right, so lyrics are written syllable-by-syllable left-to-right, but the syllables themselves are right-to-left.I should also have mentioned that Hindi, etc., puts the digits of numbers in the same order as the West, despite the language being right-to-left. However, this may be because Hindi speaks numbers from low to high (the inimitable Aishwarya Rai was born in the Christian year three and seventy and nine hundred and one thousand).

[xcalibre]

I believe Edward Lost has it right.

Ancient languages using chisels tend to be right to left( or up to down ) because of the left hand resting on the medium, where as modern languages are left to right because the right hand would tend to be on the medium.

[Exapno Mapcase]

For example, I read somewhere that the original English bible before King James was done in the protestant Netherlands, since the catholic church was being somewhat touchy about letting the masses see and put their own interpretation on scriptures. Hence, the pronuciation with a dutch accent, "e-now-g-h" for "enuff" means that's how we spell "enough" nowadays and many other weird english spellings.

Please, never, ever, ever post something you "read somewhere."

Here (http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/) is a long, long page of English language bibles before the King James.
The first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts were produced in the 1380's AD by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian.

And here's some history of enough:
Origin:
bef. 900; ME enogh, OE genōh; c. G genug, Goth ganohs, ON nōgr; akin to OE geneah it suffices, Skt naśati (he) reaches

The rest of your post is similar "just-so" stories, with the same level of historic reality.

[signal11]

The trouble with this concept is that, with the obvious exception of the Cyrillic alphabet, most alphabets were not the result of anyone man or group of men. They were things which evolved over millenia of writing by the speakers of a given language. So unless left-handedness is a dominant trait in those areas, handedness is not the explanation for RtL over LtR horizontal writing.

Cyrillic? I would say that the more obvious exception would be Hangul, the modern Korean script. Following the mores of the Chinese sphere of influence, originally written top to bottom then right to left. Up until the 80s, books and newspapers were generally written this way. Today, most text is written left to right, top to bottom. Different punctuation systems between the two as well. Seems to be the general trend for CJK/East Asia.

I find the LtR, TtB better when writing long texts with multiple lines but the flow is better top to bottom especially when writing Chinese. Nice for writing short notes in margins of books. I don't care at all for the TtB, RtL for writing in pen or pencil because of the smudge thing. On the other hand, it's nice for calligraphy because the open space is more in front of you.

There is a case where the two systems can lead to confusion and that's when something is written TtB, RtL with only one character per column, in effect making the characters read RtL.

[Kamino Neko]

I thought Chinese went top to bottom? If so, does it really matter from a writing/hand-in-the-way issue whether successive columns are LtR or RtL? It's Japanese, isn't it, that's RtL?

Chinese and Japanese are both traditionally written the same way - vertically, top to bottom, with lines 'stacked' right to left. So, you'll start in the top right corner of a page, end toward the lower left corner.

When written horizontally, Japanese flows left to right. (Typically. There are situations where it will run right to left.)

I don't know enough about Chinese to know if writing horizontally works the same way.

[Shot From Guns]

It's Japanese, isn't it, that's RtL?

When Japanese is written horizontally (e.g., on a website), it's written the same way as English: starting at the upper left corner, with each row written left-to-right and rows proceeding top-to bottom.

When Japanese is written vertically (e.g., in a book), it's written starting in the upper right corner, with each column written top-to-bottom and columns proceeding right-to-left.

[Mike2]

... and yes, there are good reasons that early semitic languages were recorded right to left... while modern languages tend to be recorded and read from left to right.

Hold a hammer in your right hand, and a chisel in your left hand... you will see that the natural direction to work is from the right to the left. Try it with a screwdriver and a hammer. Hence, I've heard from multiple sources, Hebrew began as a right to left language, as stone workers chiseled letters in rocks.

For written languages that were first recorded on parchment and ink... left to right writing prevents the writing hand from smudging the already written letters.

Was Hebrew really first written with a chisel? I suppose you might argue and research that issue, but I've heard reputable scholars make that claim.

In the case of Chinese writing, working downward also solves the smudging problem. Are the columns aligned left to right? That would be consistent with that theory too, if they are, moving the right hand out of the way as each column is completed.

[md2000]

Not so. Sundials in the northern hemisphere go clockwise, and clocks followed suit.

The entire near-eastern and middle-eastern tradition was to write right-to-left, and the earliest Greek writing, adapted from that of the people the Bible knows as the "Canaanites", was written right-to-left, too. Boustrophedon was an intermediate stage on the way to left-to-right.

Arrggghhhh!


England was Protestant long before James VI/I. You may have heard of Elizabeth I, not to mention her brother Edward VI and her father Henry VIII.

Yes, I even remember Wycliffe, as the other poster's link provides. Which mentions the work being done outside England due to sensitivities of the clergy - actually, the "Inquisition". Publication date 1535, the year mentioned, was during the reign of Henry VII (Separation from Rome happened 1533 or so, but I imagine things were "interesting" still in the years before that). Before Henry decided to reform the divorce law, he was a staunch defender of the faith up to and including writing some learned treatises on matters theological.

The initial translation work, as the site mentioned, was done in the 1300's.

The middle-easter bit is a good point - what IS the writing direction of Cunieform, heiroglyphics?

From Wikipedia -

Originally, pictograms were drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a pen made from a sharpened reed stylus, or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge-shape of the strokes.
In the mid-3rd millennium, writing direction was changed to left to right in horizontal rows (rotating all of the pictograms 90° counter-clockwise in the process), and a new wedge-tipped stylus was used which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped ("cuneiform") signs; these two developments made writing quicker and easier. By adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions.
The Englishman Sir Thomas Herbert in the 1634 edition of his travel book “A relation of some yeares travaile” reported seeing at Persepolis carved on the wall “a dozen lines of strange characters…consisting of figures, obelisk, triangular, and pyramidal” and thought they resembled Greek. However by the 1664 edition he had guessed, correctly, that they represented not letters or hieroglyphics but words and syllables, and furthermore that they were to be read from left to right.

---
I don't see any references with a quick search, whether Heiroglyphs or Linear A or B are LtR or RtL. From memory, the Egyptians seemed to like top to bottom too... There is a suggestion that they copied from cuneiform.

So the grouchy Master Of Scribes for the mesopotamian potentate de jour who decided to simplify cuneiform writing in 1000BC has left his mark to this day in LtR writing direction.

---
I don't have my books unpacked, but IIRC it was Daniel J. Boorstin's book "The Discoverers" than mentioned that clocks could run either direction. Like driving on one side or the other (sort of), the tradition as to which way clocks should run eventually sorted itself out as people followed the center of fashion. The "because that's the way the sundial goes" is as much a Just-So-Story as any other explanation. Up to the 1500's and even later, IIRC, there are exampels of clocks that run counterclockwise.

The bit about "enough" and "enuff" with the bible translation - unfortunately, this was something I saw either in an Analog SF science column or one by Isaac Asimov. This sort of material is rarely online and searchable, so I must go by "memory", such as it is. A quick perusal of Project Gutenberg's Canterbury Tales shows several spellings of "wrought", "thought", "brought", "drought", "ought". No indication unless I want to read for an hour or more, whether this is an updated spelling. But I'll guess that instead it was standard(?) English spelling at the time.

It would be interesting to see whether a statistical study of classical art or ancient art determines that there is a "preferred" direction in the human mind - do portraits tend to look left or right mostly? Do charging and galloping animals, warriors, etc. tend to be headed left or right? Do even car chases in movies tend to go left or right? (I also "read soemwhere" that once a direction is established, the director does not like to mix PoV shots going both ways because it can confuse the viewer).

[signal11]

In the case of Chinese writing, working downward also solves the smudging problem. Are the columns aligned left to right? That would be consistent with that theory too, if they are, moving the right hand out of the way as each column is completed.

No, as has been mentioned multiple times by multiple folks, Chinese sphere of influence goes Top to Bottom, Right to Left.

I don't see any references with a quick search, whether Heiroglyphs or Linear A or B are LtR or RtL. From memory, the Egyptians seemed to like top to bottom too... There is a suggestion that they copied from cuneiform.

Heiroglyphs were written in either direction LtR OR RtL and easy enough to tell by looking at the direction the the figures in the glyphs are facing.

I don't know about Linear A or B.

[Gordon_Comstock]

I should also have mentioned that Hindi, etc., puts the digits of numbers in the same order as the West, despite the language being right-to-left. However, this may be because Hindi speaks numbers from low to high (the inimitable Aishwarya Rai was born in the Christian year three and seventy and nine hundred and one thousand).

No, Hindi is written left to right. It is Urdu, basically the same language, that is written right to left.

I'm reminded of a story (possibly apocryphal) I heard about a western NGO working in Pakistan. They were trying to promote the use of oral rehydration salts for babies with diarrhoea to illiterate mothers. They came up with a cartoon strip with a weak looking kid in the first box, the kid being given ORS in the second box and a proud mother holding a healthy, happy baby in the third box. Unfortunately this cartoon was from left to right and the mothers, although illiterate, knew that you read from right to left. The campaign wasn't a success...

[not_alice]

Y'all will do well to read and study the archives of the mailing list of Unicode.org, which begins at a time after the original column but still about 20 years ago. This stuff has been discussed there nearly continuously (or it references discussions elsewhere) by those with a professional and/or academic interest in the matter.

[Exapno Mapcase]

The latest New Scientist has a fascinating article on undeciphered scripts (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227106.000-decoding-antiquity-eight-scripts-that-still-cant-be-read.html?page=3), although you need to look at the actual magazine to see pictures of examples. For this discussion, here's a great example.
One thing is beyond dispute: the direction of reading is unusual, though not unique. To read a rongo-rongo tablet, you start at the bottom left-hand corner and read along the line. Then you turn the tablet by 180 degrees and begin reading the next line up, again from left to right. At the end of that line, you repeat the 180-degree turn, and so on. This is known as reverse boustrophedon ("boustrophedon" is ancient Greek for "as the ox turns" when ploughing).

Was Hebrew really first written with a chisel? I suppose you might argue and research that issue, but I've heard reputable scholars make that claim.
I need cites. I don't believe any language was first written with a chisel. That's far too hard for a first step. You start with marks on a flexible and pliable medium before stylizing it in stone.

I don't have my books unpacked, but IIRC it was Daniel J. Boorstin's book "The Discoverers" than mentioned that clocks could run either direction.
I checked my copy and don't see any mention of this. A search in Google Books reveals only one instance of clockwise in the book and the context doesn't support you.
The Skraelings stormed the Viking camp, swinging their battle staves "anti-sunwise" (there was not yet any anti-clockwise)...

[PitJ]

Yeah, that was tricky, but once I got used to it I immediately noticed how comfortable it was to be able to continue from the same position rather than snapping my eyes back to the left-hand margin at the end of each line. I think those ancient Greeks were on to something. :p

Perhaps they were all for ease of handling, or they might all have been ambi-dextrous...

When I was a small kid I used to be left-handed but my mother "corrected" that, which for one made me quite clumsy for several years (thanks mum). She probably wasn't done when I approached school and started reading and writing, because both my parents (being divorced and not speaking, this gave a bit credibility to the story in my eyes) told me independently that when I got a blackboard on an easel, I started writing right-handed from left to right but at the end of the first line swapped the chalk and continued left-handed right to left in mirror letters.

I know it sounds funny but both swore to it so I am tempted to believe them.