More than now and again. In NY Chinatown, and in
Taiwan (less so in in China, where LTR seems more the
norm), directionality on horizontally signs (and
newspaper headlines) seems almost random, at the whim
of the sign maker (and when I was a kid, RTL was the
norm, but that seems to have changed). This makes
things tricky for a semililiterate like me, to whom
the direction the sign is supposed to be read is less
than clear, particulary when it only consists of two
or three characters.

Furthermore, old, premodern signs in China written
horizontally, over temple gates and the like, are
invariably read RTL. So today, if you want something
to look old fashioned, you do the same and write right
to left.

Finally, no one handwrites horizontally RTL, at least
that I've ever seen. People still write vertically
RTL (and never vertically LTR), but that's giving way
to western style horizontal LTR.

Just thought I'd toss in my observations for their
$.02 worth.


-Weiben Wang

--- John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

> Nicholas Bodley scripsit:
>
> > Nevertheless, I was astonished to see the name of
> a local Chinese
> > restaurant (Beijing Star, iirc) rendered
> horizontally RtoL. Just one
> > more stage in casual self-education...
>
> Yes, they do that now and again. I used to think
> this could be interpreted
> as top-to-bottom style with columns of length 1, but
> that won't explain
> all the cases.

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