Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts facts for kids
Many East Asian scripts can be written both horizontally and vertically.
History
Documents around the world have many different ways of writing. But there are mainly two ways of writing: writing horizontally (횡서, 橫書) or vertically (종서縱書). There are two kinds of horizontal writing. One kind can be read from left to right (좌횡서, 左橫書); the other is read from right to left (우횡서, 右橫書). There are two kinds of vertical writing as well: from left to right (좌정서, 左縱書) or from right to left (우정서, 右縱書), both of these are written from top to bottom. Traditionally, the countries in the East Asian cultural sphere (such as Korea, China, Japan or Vietnam) write vertically from right to left. When it was necessary to write horizontally, they wrote horizontally from right to left. When the Western culture began influencing them, they began writing horizontally from left to right, which is now used widely.
Most Western languages are written horizontally from left to right, but Arabic and Hebrew are written horizontally from right to left. Mongol letters are written horizontally from left to right.
Long ago, people used hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were very flexible characters. They were often written from left to right in the first line, and then right to left in the second line, and so on. This is called boustrophedon. A person can tell which direction to read by which direction the hieroglyphs of animals and people were facing. If the hieroglyphs were facing left, then the line must be read from left to right. If they were facing right, they must be read from right to left.
Images for kids
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An unfolded Chinese bamboo book featuring text written vertically along the strips of bamboo.
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Text on the sides of China Post vehicles runs from the front of the car to the rear, i.e. from left to right on the vehicle's left side, and from right to left on its right side. English text on the right side is also in reverse order. This arrangement is common on tour buses in China as well.
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Meiji-era offices of Nintendo, with its sign written right-to-left (migi yokogaki).
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Example of a newspaper article written vertically in Traditional Chinese with a left-to-right horizontal headline. Note the rotation of the Latin letters and Arabic numerals when written with the vertical text.
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The slogans on Tiananmen ("Long live the People's Republic of China" and "Long live the unity of the people of the world") are written in Simplified Chinese from left to right.
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Highway markings are read from bottom to top. The right lane reads 慢车道 for "slow lane" while the middle lane reads 快车道 for "fast lane".
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Signage in the Dongdaemun History and Culture Park SMRT station in Seoul, South Korea. The Korean texts were written vertically. The sign "동대문역사문화공원" requires two columns (lines), which run from right to left.
