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A sibling comment suggests that it's to help encode the direction, but I wonder if there's a less intentional reason, which is: why not mirror the letters? If I
by rflrob 9y ago
A sibling comment suggests that it's to help encode the direction, but I wonder if there's a less intentional reason, which is: why not mirror the letters? If I were coming up with conventions for reading and writing for the first time or possibly based on descriptions that some sailor had reported, it's not obvious to me that the direction of the letter should matter, especially if the letters you are using aren't mirror symmetric with other letters (lower case wasn't invented until ~1,000 years after the Hellenistic period, when boustrophedon fell out of favor).
- Grustaf 9y agoExactly. And I think the idea to encode direction is a bit anachronistic, in those days they didn't even use punctuation or spaces so it was pretty hard to read anyway, you'd have to do a lot of thinking. And of course with Semitic writing you didn't even encode the vowel sounds. In hieroglyphic inscriptions the animals etc do face the direction of reading (which varies), but I'm not sure this was in order to help people read it easier.
- jdmichal 9y agoI was told in my university class that the glyphs faced the direction of reading because they were thought of as talking to the reader. And, of course, it's rude to talk to someone when you're facing away from them.
- darkhorn 9y ago> it was pretty hard to read anyway Yes, and they did not invent the space character back then. the wrtng looks like ths tht my couisn just writes andgets mad if i dont understn him