Direction of writing
trevorb
May 10, 2009, 10:21 PM posted in General DiscussionMy chinese writing and reading skills are not that great yet but watching an old martial arts film the other night I started to wonder about the direction of the writing.
On CPod and places like XinHua the writing is all done left to right. Is this always the case or does it vary and if it varies are you just expected to work it out or is there some clue?
pearltowerpete
May 11, 2009, 03:02 AMHi trevorb and jckeith,
Left->Right, Top->bottom printing is now standard in mainland books, newspapers and websites. But if you see signs at old temples or buildings, or read manuscripts more than a hundred years old, the writing will be right->left. Many TW/HK books are still published in right->left columns.
This has always baffled me. Most people are right-handed and Chinese was historically written with ink and brushes. You would seem to be constantly dragging your sleeve through what you had just written. I'm sure I'm missing something but I don't have enough time to figure it out now.
Better-informed poddies, please enlighten us.
trevorb
May 13, 2009, 07:13 PMThat seems about right the film I was watching had lots of old temples and buildings. Some were vertical and I could identify a few of the meanings.
I thought about this for a while thinking this must be so confusing for people, then I remembered sitting in a resturant and reading the back of the writing on the window that was reversed for me inside the shop. I could do this happily because I understood how the characters go together to form the words. I think therefore my inability to work out the direction of the chinese is intricately linked with my currently poor grasp of reading the characters.
I will assume that all I read is left to right and that if I can't read it its more likely to be me than the orientation!
bababardwan
May 14, 2009, 05:41 AMHad a look at a couple of magazines from HK today where the first page is what we would normally consider the last page;that is turning over the pages from left to right rather than the usual right to left.Also the writing inside was a mixture of vertical and horizontal.
jckeith
May 11, 2009, 02:53 AMHi trevorb. As I understand it, writing is always left-to-right just as in the West. Calligraphy might be an exception though. Writing used to be vertical and right-to-left though.