Question...

[fading.colors]

I've been trying to learn Japanese for a while now, and my friend pointed me to this site. However, while doing the Hiragana tutorial, I noticed that all the example words were written left-to-right. But isn't Japanese written right-to-left?

I'm really confused about this, so if someone could explain it, it'd be much appreciated.

[Yudan Taiteki]

Japanese is written in two ways:
1) Vertically, going up-to-down and right-to-left
2) Horizontally, the same way as Western writing (left-to-right)

#2 is most often used on the Internet and computer related things because of the difficulty of representing vertical text on computers. It's also used for a lot of technical writing. Newspapers, fiction, and other things are written vertically.

[Mike Cash]

Horizontal right-to-left writing largely disappeared from common use many decades ago. The most common place you can see it still used is on the right side of trucks and other commercial vehicles....and not always then.

[Feba]

Horizontal right-to-left writing largely disappeared from common use many decades ago. The most common place you can see it still used is on the right side of trucks and other commercial vehicles....and not always then.

Much in the way that military things with flag decorations tend to have it reversed on the right side?

I have a question, though, are things written left to right published very often; and if they are, does the book have the binding on the left or right side?

[Hyperworm]

To my knowledge, novels are almost always written vertically and bound on the right.
If a book was written in the horizontal style, which would be common for books which necessarily must include a large amount of horizontal text (such as computer programming manuals), it would be bound on the left.

[fading.colors]

Ok, I think that I understand it now. Thanks!

All I really knew before was that mangas are generally read right-to-left.

[john2]

But verticle writting is so |_ƎƎ7!
^^(…… okay maybe Less emotionally…… it still hurt’s that it’s not th ecase a little bit, , verticle writting are it’s nice advantages that way you don't smudge all your text.

[Mike Cash]

But verticle writting is so |_ƎƎ7!
^^(…… okay maybe Less emotionally…… it still hurt’s that it’s not th ecase a little bit, :P, verticle writting are it’s nice advantages that way you don't smudge all your text.

You're the only guy I know who can manage to smudge his text with a keyboard.

[AJBryant]

You're the only guy I know who can manage to smudge his text with a keyboard.

Brilliant observation. Absolutely BRILLIANT.

Tony