boustrophedon (was: Atlantis II)

At 11:04 pm -0400 14/6/01, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, John Cowan wrote:
>
>> Danny Wier scripsit:
>>
>> > | 4) It is read zig-zag, 1st line is Left to Right, 2nd line is read
>>Right to
>> > Left, 3rd line is Left to Right, 4th line is Right to left and so on....
>> >
>> > Boustrophedon.
_Reverse_ boustrophedon - as the original boustrophedon practised by those
ancient Greeks (always AFAIK) began with 1st line Right-to-Left and thus
with all the odd numbered lines; the even numbered went Left-to-Right.

>> Strictly speaking, it is only boustrophedon if the letters on the RTL lines
>> are mirror images of the ones on the LTR lines.
Quite so.

>Huh.  It was either in some book on the history of writing (mainly
>methods of, like pens and paper and papyrus and stuff) or _The Cambridge
>Encyclopedia of Language_ (2nd ed., David Crystal), and I'm sorry I can't
>remember which, that it said there were several kinds of boustrophedon,
>of which the definition you give was only one.
Ah, I suspect John lke me thinks that because the Greeks coined the word
then it means what they meant by it, i.e. as defined above.

In ancient Greek BTW _boustrophe:do'n_ was an adverb meaning "ploughwise"
("plowwise"?) << bou- (ox) + stroph- (turn); but the adverb was
particularly use of the archaic style of writing.

Maybe the other 'ploughwise' types of writing to which Yoon Ha refers could
be termed "boustrophedoid"  ;)

What are these boustrophedoid scripts?

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
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