3 ms·
I found it surprisingly easy to read the mirrored examples in the article. I think it may be more comfortable -- after a while, at least -- to read the mirrored
by morsch 9y ago
I found it surprisingly easy to read the mirrored examples in the article. I think it may be more comfortable -- after a while, at least -- to read the mirrored letters; because we don't read letter-by-letter anyway and the "word image" is intact (just mirrored).
Here's the example image (with mirrored letters): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon#/media/File:Boustrophedon.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon#/media/File:Bous...
And here's a non-mirrored version:
THIS EXAMPLE OF BOUSTROPHEDON TEXT WAS
AIDEPIKIW EHT ROF YLLACIFICEPS NETTIRW
ARTICLE ON THIS OX TURNING METHOD OF
TNEICNA NI TXET HTIW LLAW A GNIREVOC
GREECE AND ELSEWHERE
- kjhughes 9y agoYou raise a good point in that we don't read letter-by-letter anyway. So, this variant, which leverages recognition of whole words at a time, would have the line tracking advantage of Boustrophedon without the problem of duplicating letters for forward and reverse directions: THIS EXAMPLE OF BOUSTROPHEDON TEXT WAS WIKIPEDIA THE FOR SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN ARTICLE ON THIS OX TURNING METHOD OF ANCIENT IN TEXT WITH WALL A COVERING GREECE AND ELSEWHERE
- singingboyo 9y agoWhile we don't read letter by letter, this does still require some left-right scanning for longer words. In texts (or languages - German?) with many long words, this would be an issue. The initial method seems to do the best job of not triggering the part of my brain that wants to read normally - which is a benefit, as I can then use a specific reading method for boustrophedon text, rather than fighting against my initial reactions.
- Legogris 9y agoProblem here is that if you enter mid-page it's not necessarily obvious which direction to read.
- twobyfour 9y agoBut you can figure it out trivially easily based on which way the letters are flipped.