When did the writing order of Chinese characters change from left to right?

What are the reasons why ancient books are arranged from right to left? When people face north to south, they look up at the stars in the sky. Suppose the stars are stationary. They look from right to left. In China (Northern Hemisphere), water also rotates to the right when it flows. If the word is water, it will inevitably rotate from top to bottom to right, so it will start a new column. In the historical period of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, people respected heaven and earth, saying that "when you look up at astronomy and look down at geography, you will know the secret" (the Book of Changes, cohesion), and naturally the words were arranged from right to left.

Students are now used to this writing order: from left to right, first up and then down, that is, horizontally to the right. This is very different from the order of ancient Chinese characters arranged vertically on the left.

In fact, since ancient times, the writing order of various characters around the world is different. Generally speaking, there are three kinds: left line, right line and down line. Today, all countries in the world still keep these three writing orders. Left-handed, such as English; Go right, such as Arabic, Hebrew, etc. Downstream such as traditional Mongolian, China ancient books printing, and sometimes Japanese.

These three writing styles are derived from different writing habits. For example, writing from right to left is said to be because of the orientation of God. With Polaris as the coordinate, the sun rises in the east (right) instead of the west (left). This method originated very early and has been preserved in Semitic language until now. The Greek alphabet is inherited from the Semitic alphabet (Phoenician alphabet), first from right to left, and then vice versa. The reason is probably that writing with the right hand, writing from right to left will block your eyes. But this change has a transitional period. Greek characters have practiced a "Niu Geng style", that is, one line goes to the right, one line goes to the left, and even the order of lines has always been from bottom to top! It was not until around 500 BC that it was changed to the most popular right-handed down order.

The ancient characters of Chinese characters have always been Zhili, with few exceptions. The origin of this sequence is closely related to the written materials. Such as ancient bamboo slips, the material texture is mostly vertical. Long and narrow bamboo slips are generally written in a single line. People's habit is always to hold a long and narrow object vertically, so they write down word by word. Because the left hand holds Jane, the right hand writes, after writing, it is placed on the right hand side in order, and the left hand holds a new Jane to start writing, which becomes the habit of going up first and then down, from left to right.

Later, it was changed to be in line with international standards.