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In Today's AWAD it says:
"In such writing, each letter on the alternate lines was written as in a mirror image or rotated 180 degrees."
A 'mirror-image' and 'rotated 180 degrees' are two very different things. The definition immediately made me think of a third option: the letters are NOT mirrorred but written in reverse order.
So, which is it?
BTW: I mow my lawn by making parallel strokes in the same direction. In this way the discharge throws grass into my [next] path so it can be further cut rather than left to lie on the cut grass in clumps.
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world" -Michael Crichton
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I'm not sure, but I do both, most commonly in cursive. Sometimes I get confused and have to stop and think. I occasionally leave notes on my colleagues' white boards - and few people knew was doing it. I was doing a diagram in another room and started annotating it. The victim of my crude caricature yelled "YOU'RE the one who wrote that message in Jack's office!"
I get practice from tutoring geometry. I usually have about 4 or 5 at a time and we're gathered around a table in the library. I have a sheet of paper and go around asking each kid a question and writing their answers step by step until the problem is solved. It takes them a moment to realize that I'm writing upside down and backwards, but it always gets them excited for a few moments and helps maintain interest. One problem - I can write numbers upside down easily enough, but I'm not so good at actually doing the math - multiplying two numbers long-hand, for example. I can do it, but I'm very error prone (more so than usual). OTOH, I like to make some good mistakes for the kids to catch. Keeps them interested and makes them feel like they're helping me.
It started out as just doodling. I would write the entire alphabet backwards, then backwards and upside down, etc. Just something to do while my mind wanders or I'm trying to focus on something.
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Even if I were not mirror-challenged, the mirror-imaging explanation might throw me. When we look in the mirror, facing forward, we don't see the back of our head (“Mirror, mirror on the wall …”). I do better thinking of the treated lines of text as either having been flipped horizontally or, as in the AWAD in boustrophedon example, vertically.
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alternate lines was written as in a mirror image or rotated 180 degrees.
I think Anu was trying to cover the case in the Easter Island Rongorongo tablets where the alternate lines use rotated glyphs. That has been referred to as boustrophedon, too.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Hey, Parkin, good to see you 'round these parts again! :-)
But yes, I agree; I am also confused. In a mirror image, the letters are reversed, as in b becomes d, etc. But a line printer (tsuwm?), though it may print boustrophedonically, has each letter facing the right way, with the words spelled forward not drawkcab.
rotated 180 degrees would mean either that the either the individual letters or the entire line would be in reverse, it seems to me. Like this:
:siht ekiL .em ot smees it ,esrever ni eb
tablets where the alternate lines use rotated glyphs. People wrote like that? Chiseled, or whatever? Whoa!
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> But a line printer (tsuwm?)
Strange new words I relish,
Like nectar or tonic.
I now know my line printer
Is boustrophedonic.
-joe (I just report 'em) friday
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charted knitting patterns are sometimes/often boustrophedonic too.
They diagram what the stitches look like on the RIGHT side of the knitting, and are read from left to right (right side row) and right to left (wrong side rows)
(in some charts, the wrong side row is "all Purls" (or rarely all knits) and then the wrong side row isn't charted.. (but omitted))
knitting can be worked as rows (right to left, left to right) or as spirals ("rounds")
so charts work for either method of knitting.
the charts are read boustrophedonicly for knitting worked in rows, and line by line (right to left) for rounds.
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Unless the terminology has changed, a line printer does not print boustophedonically; it prints an entire line out at one time. Printers with a single character at a time print head will print from left to right and then right to left, but the result is not boustrophedon. It's just normal read from left to right (or right to left, depending on the language being printed, e.g., Hebrew or Arabic). As to the original question the term refers to both miror image and upside down. We don't have to decide on one or the other to proclaim it boustrophedon.
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Thanks, Faldage, for that input. As to the original question the term refers to both miror image and upside down. We don't have to decide on one or the other to proclaim it boustrophedon. To clarify, the original question was NOT as to which is boustrophedonic. It was the [perhaps poor] choice of words to describe an 'either/or' scenario.
Last edited by ParkinT; 08/04/08 05:23 PM.
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world" -Michael Crichton
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Thanks, Faldage, for that input. As to the original question the term refers to both miror image and upside down. We don't have to decide on one or the other to proclaim it boustrophedon. To clarify, the original question was NOT as to which is boustrophedonic. It was the [perhaps poor] choice of words to describe an 'either/or' scenario. You mean like 'or'? "In such writing, each letter on the alternate lines was written as in a mirror image or rotated 180 degrees."
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