4 ms·

Carving in stone for right handlers may be easier for right-to-left scripts, which begs the question about what happened with the Greeks? What triggered left/to

• lovecg 6y ago
  I don’t remember where I read this explanation, but it appears that originally the writing was in both directions: you would get to the edge, and then write the next row backwards under it (in a snakes-and-ladders fashion). Then over time some cultures dropped one or the other direction. The continuous style is probably more natural when carving or with tablets, etc. while a single direction makes more sense when writing with a pen.
  • cptnapalm 6y ago
    I remember reading that hieroglyphs work that way with a neat idea of changing the facing of the characters depending on which way to read it.
  • YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
    >> I don’t remember where I read this explanation, but it appears that originally the writing was in both directions: you would get to the edge, and then write the next row backwards under it (in a snakes-and-ladders fashion). That is "boustrophedon" as in ithkuil's comment. "Boustrophedon" means "as an ox turns" in Greek and it aludes to the way an ox is directed to walk while tilling a field, tilling one "row" in one direction, then turning around and tilling the next row in the opposite direction, etc. Like this (where the ">" and "<" show the ox starting a new row in a new direction): ->-----------. ,----------<-' `->---------- And so on. The alternative is to get to the end of one row and then walk without tilling to the start of the next row, but of course that wastes time.