Right-to-left, top-to-bottom text is supported in common computer software. Most modern scripts are LTR, but N'Ko (1949), Mende Kikakui (19th century), Adlam (1980s) and Hanifi Rohingya (1980s) were created in modern times and are RTL.Īncient examples of text using alphabets such as Phoenician, Greek, or Old Italic may exist variously in left-to-right, right-to-left, or boustrophedon order therefore, it is not always possible to classify some ancient writing systems as purely RTL or LTR. Kurdish may be written in the Arabic or Latin script. For example, Sindhi is commonly written in Arabic and Devanagari scripts, and a number of others have been used. Several languages have both Arabic RTL and non-Arabic LTR writing systems. Many other ancient and historic scripts derived from Aramaic inherited its right-to-left direction. Samaritan is similar, but developed from Proto-Hebrew rather than Aramaic. Syriac and Mandaean (Mandaic) scripts are derived from Aramaic and are written RTL. While the Hebrew alphabet is used to write the Hebrew language, it is also used to write other Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Judaeo-Spanish. As usage of the Arabic script spread, the repertoire of 28 characters used to write the Arabic language was supplemented to accommodate the sounds of many other languages such as Kashmiri, Pashto, etc. Hebrew and Arabic- Persian are the most widespread RTL writing systems in modern times. The Arabic script is mostly but not exclusively right-to-left mathematical expressions, numeric dates and numbers bearing units are embedded from left to right. These scripts can be contrasted with many common modern left-to-right writing systems, where writing starts from the left of the page and continues to the right.

Books designed for predominantly vertical TBRL text open in the same direction as those for RTL horizontal text: the spine is on the right and pages are numbered from right to left. Right-to-left can also refer to top-to-bottom, right-to-left (TB-RL or vertical) scripts of tradition, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, though in modern times they are also commonly written left to right (with lines going from top to bottom). Ancient Chinese was written top to bottom, right to left

Going left right