Why did the ancients write vertically from right to left? Why did the ancients write vertically from right to left?

1. The earliest writing was on bamboo slips.

The reason why the ancients wrote vertically is because before the invention of papermaking, the ancients wrote on bamboo and wooden slips.

Bamboo slips are long and narrow pieces of bamboo that can be strung together with ropes and rolled into volumes.

The word "book" is the pictographic character of the slip, and it is natural to open the volume with the right hand and open it with the left hand.

Therefore, writing is from top to bottom, from right to left.

In ancient times, bamboo slips were written individually and then bound.

2. Characteristics of Chinese characters and people’s writing habits.

Judging from the characteristics of Chinese characters and people's physiological habits, the stroke order of a character is naturally from top to bottom and from left to right.

If you write horizontally from right to left, when writing the left half, the brush will inevitably block the right half of the glyph, making it difficult to arrange the structure and affecting the beauty of the knot.

The last stroke of each Chinese character is in the lower middle or lower right. The last stroke of the previous character is followed by the beginning of the next character. Vertical writing is more convenient for the continuity of strokes than horizontal writing.

3. The ancients respected the right side.

Chinese characters are written from top to bottom and from right to left, which also reflects the ancients' thinking of superiority and inferiority.

In ancient times, the superiors were kings and parents; the subordinates were ministers and children.

The right is big, the left is small, "nothing is better than the right" means there is no more.

4. It has to do with carving words on stones.

Arabic and Hebrew are also written from right to left. It is said that this is related to the ancient people carving characters on stones. For ordinary people, holding a drill in the left hand and a hammer in the right hand, the direction of carving is naturally from right to left.

left.

It was not until after the Revolution of 1911, with reference to Western culture, that the writing form of Chinese characters gradually changed to the current horizontal arrangement, written from left to right.