Here in the USA, pretty much every book I’ve ever seen has its title on the spine, written downward. In other words, if it’s sitting on a shelf, you might have to tilt your head to the right a little bit to read it. Also, pretty much all of them have been written in English.
Recently, I was at Barnes and Noble looking for some Spanish-language fiction to practice my vocabulary and comprehension, and I noticed that several of the books had been shelved the other way, with the title going upwards. I was forced to tilt my head to the left. They weren’t just mis-filed, because I took a few out to look through them, and they were right side up. To put it back on the shelf so that the spine looked “right” would have meant that the cover and pages would all be upside down.
Is this a Spanish thing? A European thing? When and why did this change in spine-styles happen?
German books’ titles on the spine also run up (i.e. so you have to tilt your head left).
Wasn’t there a thread on that some time ago? If I recollect rightly the usage in English-language publishing was based on the spine title being right way up when a stack of books was presented on a table in the bookstore.
Almost all the ones I’ve seen in the UK go down, but a few older books go up. I deduce it used to be either way, and then each country picked a standard.
The ‘downward’ direction can be explained as being ‘right’ when the book lies down face up. Presumably the french just wanted to be different from the English?
