Can vertical lines in Oracle Bone Inscriptions be interpreted as lettering? It is more convenient to operate from top to bottom. Besides, writing tools, whether bamboo slips or wooden slips, are top-down, and top-down writing is natural and convenient.
But whether it is left or right, there seems to be no practical problem, but there are still some problems to be discussed.
Bamboo slips are made by special people and then written, which is more convenient, especially in the imperial court, and not many people can write at that time, so the cultural foundation determines the so-called habits in the future. This is premise one.
Ancient books were compiled by Wei bamboo slips. Most people pick up books with their right hands. Naturally, the left hand holds the note and the right hand slowly opens it to read. The long-term habit of most people has become the binding habit of bamboo slips in later generations. After the appearance of paper, cotton and silk, it must be the writing and reading habits in the era of bamboo slips.
Imagine a roll of bamboo slips. When reading, we are naturally used to rolling it into a roll with our left hand and then pulling it out with our right hand. From the top of the book (using modern books to point out this angle, such as a book turned to the left, the cover is facing itself, if the book is placed horizontally at this time, the outward side is the top of the book, if it is placed vertically, the upward side is the top of the book), we can be sure that it is a series of bamboo slips rolled clockwise outward, thus, it is natural and convenient for the left hand to read continuously.
Later, the current writing habits should be influenced by the new culture movement. At that time, Chen Duxiu and others advocated vernacular Chinese, the form of which was imitating the West, such as punctuation. Writing from left to right is also imitating the west. (I'm not sure)
But now I think it is more "scientific" to start from the left.
The reason is that basically the last stroke of each Chinese character is to the right. If you start the stroke from the right, you will inevitably move the stroke in the opposite direction after writing a word. Too much writing will inevitably affect efficiency.
At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Guo Moruo, then Minister of Education, proposed to Chairman Mao that the vertical body should be changed to the horizontal body, and the right-to-left writing should be changed to the left-to-right writing. Because people's eyes, the angle and area seen by turning left and right are much wider than those seen by turning up and down. In this way, writing and reading horizontally will reduce the fatigue of the eyes. Guo Moruo also suggested simplifying the text and using pinyin.