In the late Qing Dynasty, some intellectuals studied Western culture, advocated the reform of Chinese characters, advocated pinyin writing, and advocated changing the traditional writing method to a "horizontal" arrangement from left to right.
In 1909, there was already a book in China that used "horizontal" typesetting. It was the book "Phonetic Marks" written by Liu Shi'en, who advocated the reform of pinyin writing.
On January 1, 1955, the beginning of the First Yuan Dynasty, everything was renewed. Old subscribers who had just received Guangming Daily were surprised to find that the newspaper they were familiar with had changed. The text that was arranged vertically from top to bottom yesterday was now running horizontally line by line. As a result, the state of reading the newspaper has completely changed. It used to be reading the newspaper from top to bottom while nodding. But now it is better. The layout from left to right makes reading the newspaper become like reading the newspaper and shaking the head. .
On this day, "Guangming Daily" published an article entitled "Changing the newspaper to horizontal layout for readers": "We believe that the layout method of modern Chinese newspapers and books, It should change with the development of modern culture and its needs, and with the changes in people's living habits. The horizontal writing of Chinese characters is a development trend."
Famous scholars Guo Moruo and Hu Yuzhi. etc. also quickly wrote an article pointing out the scientific nature of horizontal text arrangement. Human eyes are horizontal, and the eye line of sight is wider when looking horizontally than vertically. When reading, the eyes and head turn smaller, which is natural and labor-saving, and less prone to fatigue. Various mathematical, physical, and chemical formulas and foreign names of people and places are arranged. It is also more convenient and can also improve paper utilization.
At this time, more than four years had passed since Mr. Tan Kah Kee proposed the "Chinese character horizontal script". It was in June 1950 that at the second session of the first session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Tan Kah Kee formally proposed Chinese characters to the conference. Proposals should be written horizontally from left to right.
Reading from vertical to horizontal arrangement is a great change in the way of writing Chinese characters. Many people are caught off guard and have difficulty adapting to this. Wang Run was a typesetter in the Guangming Daily printing factory at that time. He also experienced that change personally: "As a typesetter, I was particularly unaccustomed to changing from vertical to horizontal layout. At that time, there were more than 20 young people in the workshop. People were not used to it at first because the words were all facing the same direction, and they were often lined up and then vertically. Everyone was tacitly aware of this situation, and would laugh at themselves when they found something wrong. , and then changed it immediately. This situation happened several times, and it took about a week before I gradually got used to it.”
Guangming Daily was the newspaper with the greatest influence among intellectuals at that time, and it was intellectuals who had the greatest influence on it. Words are very sensitive. As a result, some people welcomed the brand-new Guangming Daily, while many others criticized it. Even the reporters were a little uncomfortable with it. They were still used to writing the manuscripts they submitted vertically. In order to change this situation, the editorial department specially printed a batch of manuscript paper, which was changed from the previous vertical grid to horizontal grid, and distributed it to everyone for use. Changes in manuscript paper force changes in the habits of these reporters.
Some readers wrote to the newspaper to object. The loudest voices were poets and calligraphers, because ancient poems and calligraphy have always been written vertically, and now they want to change it to horizontal. Some people don’t know how to write it. . A reader wrote in the letter: "Looking at today's newspapers, it feels like a landscape painting has been placed upside down. It looks awkward no matter how you look at it."
So, someone conducted a special experiment: Select 10 The students were divided into two groups, male and female, and were asked to read carefully selected lyrical essays from the same "China Youth Daily". The difference in results is obvious: the reading speed of the horizontal version is 1.345 times that of the vertical version.
After "Guangming Daily" took the lead in the practice, by November 1955, 13 of the 17 central-level newspapers had changed to horizontal layout. On January 1, 1956, the "People's Daily" also changed its format to horizontal layout. At this point, the whole country responded.