On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, John Cowan wrote:

> Nicholas Bodley scripsit:
> > This brings to mind another question. I'm fairly sure that Chinese is
> > occasionally written RtoL; however, when, and for what reasons?
>
> That's a matter of dispute. Chinese headlines, e.g., look like RTL, but
> can also be seen as TTB in columns of depth 1.

That doesn't hold up for multi-line text. e.g., at an archive of
newspaper clippings[1], there is a clipping from a 1999 issue (date not
indicated) of an article[2], where the four-line photo caption is a single
sentence paragraph, with a paragraph indent, text running rtl, and
embedded English text running ltr (but the list commas and open/close
quotes are still ltr style). Besides the structure, the content also
indicates it is not a case of multiple captions/paragraphs/headlines--the
word "gongsi" (company) is split across the left end of the third line and
the right end of the fourth line. (The newspaper logo, headlines, and
article body are ttb, running right to left across the page, though, with
embedded English text rotated 90 degrees clockwise, except the string
"80/20" in the headline.)

There are some other examples at [1], if one wants to see more.

[1] http://www.la80-20.org/chinese/news.htm
[2] http://www.la80-20.org/chinese/news1999/presspac6.gif


Thomas Chan
tc31@...