5 ms·
I'd bet a lot of this behavior is heavily correlated with how we generally read top to bottom, which is in itself, probably an arbitrary decision made by ancien
by davidczech 1y ago
I'd bet a lot of this behavior is heavily correlated with how we generally read top to bottom, which is in itself, probably an arbitrary decision made by ancient text writers.
- vman81 1y agoWriting top to bottom, and even left to right has/had advantages for mostly right-handed writers to avoid moving your hand over and smudging previously written text.
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoHow would top-to-bottom benefit right-handed writers any more than left-handed ones?
- hyperhello 1y agoAnd why would that make the top better than the bottom anyway? That's like saying the meal is worse after you finish it.
- roarcher 1y agoTop to bottom advantages everyone. Left to right advantages the right-handed. Right handed being the majority, top to bottom and left to right wins in almost every writing system.
- InitialLastName 1y agoWriting top-to-bottom has advantages for all writers whose eyes are above their hands. The bit of the writing surface that's blocked by your hand hasn't been written on yet.
- nomel 1y agoExtending that, heads have a much easier time moving left and right than up and down, since the motion uses the pivot joints. So, that means rastering left to right, then top to bottom, is the best match to the average reading and writing human (since right handedness is the dominant genetic trait [1]). [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37423-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37423-8
- ks2048 1y agoI’m not sure it’s arbitrary. For one, starting at the top and ending at the bottom is natural progress of things because of gravity. I’m not sure if that means anything, but down-to-up seems very unnatural (of coure I can’t ignore my cultural biases). Is there any writing systems like that?
- jama211 1y agoGravity is just a random natural process to pick for your point. You could just as easily say “bottom to top is natural because that’s the direction trees grow”. It’s all arbitrary.
- mryijum 1y agoyeah it's remarkable how many comments in this thread seem to be grasping onto random facts as if they represent a non-arbitrary justification. is this a contrarian impulse or an anti-contrarian impulse?
- jama211 1y agoPeople latch hardest onto a random explanation when they have the least idea what’s going on. The more someone knows, the more complicated and “it depends” their answer will be I’ve found. A green flag for me that someone might be an expert is when their attitude towards answering a questions has that “it depends” energy.
- ks2048 1y agoI don't think it takes knowledge of gravity/energy/entropy to generalize that things more naturally "fall down" rather things naturally "rise up". But, it's probably a stretch to say that influenced writing direction. Others have made a possibly more relevant point - in one direction, your arm/hand will block what you have already written.
- jama211 1y agoMore languages read right to left than left to right despite most people being right handed, so the blocking what you’ve written thing doesn’t seem to add up either. I agree human mechanics is likely the reason people tend to write down rather than up though. But I’d say it’s more about our muscles, we’re stronger pulling our arms in than pushing them out. But I’m no expert so would never claim confidence in my assumption there.
- bandie91 1y ago> arbitrary where is your writing-capable organ relative to your reading organs?