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Comment by gingericha | Hacker News Reader

This may seem like a silly question, but does anyone know why the alphabet seems to flip from 500 bce (ancient Latin) to 1 ce (Roman)?

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Same question came up on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/8am0si/e...

> Linguist here! In those ancient languages, there was no standard writing direction or standardized spelling conventions. In fact the Greeks often wrote in either direction alternating in a method called "boustrophedon" which means "ox-turning." You get to the end of the line and then write backwards to the other side of the page; it's actually much better for reading.

Answer by sandscript

"boustrophedon" sounds extremely useful. Too bad that practice didn't remain. I always find my eyes loose track of where the next row starts, especially with small text and/or wide screens/paper.

The fastest way to go rasterize fixed sized tiles on LRB was boustrophedon—only requires ~9 registers, and takes 3c per 16 samples, amortized.

LRB?

Larrabee; an old Intel part.

I made a browser plugin that uses color gradients to help with this precise problem: http://www.beelinereader.com/individual. I had no idea how widespread this problem was until I posted a Show HN and my website grinded to a halt.

It turns out line tracking is an issue for readers with dyslexia, various visual problems, and ADHD.

When you hand write you need to switch hands on the reverse line. It's quite difficult to teach people to be ambidextrous.

I used to take notes that way in college sometimes (i.e. more that once, but not for anything very important). It felt almost natural to mirror the letters while also writing right-to-left.

The author addresses it right there on the page:

As for why so many of the letters flipped, it's because they used to be written in both directions. But with the introduction of ink, left to right eventually became standard (less smudging if you're right-handed).

I am guessing, but originally there wasn't a defined writing direction, ancient latin texts are left-to-right, right-to-left and boustrophoedic (continuous left-right-left line).

Possibly the letter direction followed the word direction, and when left-right was established so were letters?

Couldn't find any information on this. The historical answer may be something simple and silly, but I'd like to think it's to do with the fact that our brain is not initially wired to distinguish straight images from mirrored ones. We acquire this ability at some stage as we learn to write (children may at some point confuse the letters and draw them mirrored).

So maybe back when literacy was so low and scripts were used only occasionally, to most literate people it didn't matter which way you drew each letter, until someone decided to canonicalize it. I suppose the choice was arbitrary.

If you use pen and ink, then the current left to right writing of the latin alphabet is very convenient for right handed people.

It doesn't explain though how ꓭ became B.

I can imagine a person writing a B using their right hand moving left to right. To me (maybe in hindsight and biased) it seems more natural to write B that way. But there may be cultures who write B but write right to left or both ways boustrophedonically "as the ox plows" like ancient Greeks did.

My reasoning is once the vertical line part is drawn it would be awkward to go backward for the two bumps. Especially if using ink not chilling it into stone. You would end up smearing the ink.

But even with stone or ink you'd have more room on the right for spacing between the previous and next letter.

It seems very subjective. There are letters where you start with the curve and end with the straight line, like lower case d. So for the mirrored B there's nothing wrong with starting with Ɛ and adding the straight line afterwards.

So still, the final choice seems pretty arbitrary to me.

We are used to things the way they are today and the way they are taught in school. Before the "standartization" of the alphabet, it did not matter whether letters were rotated or reflected; for example, originally the letter A was written upside down (with the bull's horns pointing upwards). Even the ordering of letters in the alphabet was not seen as essential; it was introduced first as a handicap for easy learning, and then, in some languages such as Greek letters started being used as numbers.

This is untrue. I use a fountain pen in my right hand for both English (LTR) and Hebrew (RTL) writing. Even with slow-drying ink, smudging or dirtying my hand is not an issue in either language. My two oldest daughters also use a fountain pen (one left handed, one right handed) with no issue.

I'm left-handed and grew up writing English. Except in the cases that I take special care to hold my hand somewhat awkwardly off the page, virtually everything I've ever written has some amount of smudging. I have vivid memories of my graphite-coated hand in primary school. In addition, it's harder to see the flow of the word; your hand covers up everything but the last letter or two.

It's clearly something that impacts different people in different ways.

Interesting, thank you for the counterpoint.

My sister instead of her hand turns the page nearly 90° counter clockwise. She writes "upwards". I always thought that was pretty neat.

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