Ink runs when dragged over by a right handed writer moving left. Some systems are objectively better for some reasons, and while accepting all of them as uniquely useful is fine, it’s certainly not an answer that sates my curiosity
Ink runs when dragged over by a right handed writer moving left.
No ink will run as long as you hold your ink brush correctly, see this video for a demonstration of traditional Japanese handwriting, top to bottom, right to left, brush held comfortably by a right handed writer, no ink dragged over:
If you’re trying to make an argument that brushes were superior to quills, I could buy that. But it still seems like a point in favor of right to left, that the opposite requires a higher minimum skill level.
Apparently Hebrew was written with hammer and chisel initially. Holding the hammer with the right hand and chisel with left, writing from right to left allowed to not cover the already written part with the left arm.
Do you assume right-handed english-style writing to be the default way everyone writes the world over, in all languages?
This is just my high talking, but I believe our right-handed dominance is tied to our language being written left to right. Had our ancestors chosen to write from right to left, perhaps we would be a left-handed dominant society.
If you believe there is an objective reason one is better than the other, then I’m all ears.
But it’s a fact that most people are right handed even in areas with right-to-left writing. No reason to speculate on things there’s already concrete information for.
Japanese was written vertically, so characters are ordered from top to bottom while it is the lines which are separated from left to right. The slow leftward advancement allows a person writing on a scroll to write with their right hand while unrolling the scroll gradually with their left. In modern times you can write Japanese horizontally, but in that case you usually write from left to right. Characters written horizontally from right to left is only done in exceptional cases.
I just realized that top-to-bottom also solves the problem with smearing discussed in another comment. Your hand is moving down, away from the fresh characters. By the time you move over to the next line, the top is already dried. (Especially with the time it takes to fill a line with kanji, which are denser than Latin script.)
I don’t know if there is an advantage or disadvantage. There are other writing directions as well. Like boustrophedon, which starts in one direction, and then when you get to the end of the line the next line goes the other direction. This sounds like a better way to write to me!
Egyptian hieroglyphs can be written either RTL or LTR, you tell because the animals and humans in the script face the beginning of the line.
What are the benefits of a language being written to the left?
What are the benefits of a language being written to the right?
Neither is better or worse than the other, each works how it needs to for its language.
Ink runs when dragged over by a right handed writer moving left. Some systems are objectively better for some reasons, and while accepting all of them as uniquely useful is fine, it’s certainly not an answer that sates my curiosity
No ink will run as long as you hold your ink brush correctly, see this video for a demonstration of traditional Japanese handwriting, top to bottom, right to left, brush held comfortably by a right handed writer, no ink dragged over:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwzJtUAzcpM
If you’re trying to make an argument that brushes were superior to quills, I could buy that. But it still seems like a point in favor of right to left, that the opposite requires a higher minimum skill level.
Apparently Hebrew was written with hammer and chisel initially. Holding the hammer with the right hand and chisel with left, writing from right to left allowed to not cover the already written part with the left arm.
Do you assume right-handed english-style writing to be the default way everyone writes the world over, in all languages?
This is just my high talking, but I believe our right-handed dominance is tied to our language being written left to right. Had our ancestors chosen to write from right to left, perhaps we would be a left-handed dominant society.
If you believe there is an objective reason one is better than the other, then I’m all ears.
But it’s a fact that most people are right handed even in areas with right-to-left writing. No reason to speculate on things there’s already concrete information for.
Japanese was written vertically, so characters are ordered from top to bottom while it is the lines which are separated from left to right. The slow leftward advancement allows a person writing on a scroll to write with their right hand while unrolling the scroll gradually with their left. In modern times you can write Japanese horizontally, but in that case you usually write from left to right. Characters written horizontally from right to left is only done in exceptional cases.
I just realized that top-to-bottom also solves the problem with smearing discussed in another comment. Your hand is moving down, away from the fresh characters. By the time you move over to the next line, the top is already dried. (Especially with the time it takes to fill a line with kanji, which are denser than Latin script.)
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.
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I don’t know if there is an advantage or disadvantage. There are other writing directions as well. Like boustrophedon, which starts in one direction, and then when you get to the end of the line the next line goes the other direction. This sounds like a better way to write to me!
Egyptian hieroglyphs can be written either RTL or LTR, you tell because the animals and humans in the script face the beginning of the line.