Graphic arts and the zigzag

The first time someone opens a manga book, the first thing that strikes them is the reversed layout of the pages. That is, the book starts at the back. That's what a Westerner thinks, of course, because for a Japanese person, we're the ones who start books upside down. And they write from right to left. This is the traditional direction of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean writing. The Arabic and Hebrew alphabets are also written from right to left, although, like the Roman and Greek alphabets, in this case it's horizontal. Therefore, they could also say that we write backwards.

Before computers and word processing erased the world of graphic arts, they were the queen of any publication. At La Vanguardia, for example, the workshop was the heart of the newspaper, where the linotype keyboards throbbed. These were skilled workers, capable of reading an article in both positive and negative print, following it directly in the texts typeset with lead on the platens, the plates on which the printing forms were adjusted and imposed.

Boustrophedon is the way of writing as oxen did when they plowed a field.

What would happen if someone were to write a text for the first time, with no prior writing knowledge—let's say, an alien? Well, they could do so horizontally or vertically. But at the end of the available space, what we call the end of the line today, what would they do? Would they start over on the other side of the surface, or would they zigzag, linking the lines like a border or like the furrows of a plow? On soccer fields, it's typical to see two-tone stripes, depending on the direction in which the grass has been cut.

Well, it turns out that one of the earliest forms of writing, in ancient Greece, adopted this system, which the dictionary defines as follows: "Writing in which the lines follow one another in the same pattern as the furrows in a field when it is plowed, alternating from right to left and from left to right." And this way of writing has a name: boustrophedon.

Although it may seem odd that this definition refers to the furrows of a plowed field, it is no coincidence, because the original Greek has precisely that meaning. The compound boustrophedon is an adverb formed from two words: on the one hand, an ox, and on the other, the action of turning. Thus, just as the ox turned and continued in the opposite direction plowing the following furrows, the ancient writer moved his hand one line, but did not return to the beginning; rather, he reversed the direction of the writing, drawing the letters in the opposite direction.