It was Mr. Chen Jiageng who first proposed the horizontal writing of Chinese characters. It was at the second meeting of the first session in Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in June 195 that Chen Jiageng formally proposed to the General Assembly that Chinese writing should be written horizontally from left to right. On January 1, 1955, Guangming Daily changed the vertical layout from top to bottom to horizontal layout for the first time, and published an article entitled "Changing the layout for this newspaper to tell readers horizontally": "We think that the layout of modern China newspapers and books should change with the development of modern culture and its needs, and should change with the changes of people's living habits. The horizontal writing of China characters is a development trend. " Famous scholars such as Guo Moruo and Hu Yuzhi also quickly wrote an article pointing out the scientific nature of horizontal writing, saying that people's eyes are horizontal, and their eyes look wider horizontally than vertically. When reading, the eyes and head rotate less, which is natural and labor-saving, and it is not easy to get tired. It is also convenient to write various mathematical, logical and cultural formulas and foreign names and places, and it can also improve the utilization rate of paper. After Guangming Daily took the lead in practice, by November 1955, 13 of the 17 central newspapers had been changed to horizontal layout. On January 1, 1956, the People's Daily was also changed to horizontal, so far, the whole country responded.
Reading from vertical to horizontal arrangement is a great change in the writing style of China characters. Someone specially conducted a special experiment: 1 top students in senior three were selected and divided into two groups, male and female, so that they could read lyric essays carefully selected from the same China Youth Daily. Results The gap is obvious: the reading speed of horizontal typesetting is 1.345 times that of vertical typesetting. Someone joked that I didn't know my eyes were long horizontally until Chinese characters were changed to horizontal writing. Others ridiculed that people's western words were written horizontally, and the reader shook his head while reading, meaning "no, no, not like this!" Therefore, there is an innovative consciousness of denying predecessors and creating new solutions; China's ancient is written vertically, and readers nod their heads while reading, meaning "Yes, yes, that's it!" Therefore, there is a conservative consciousness of superstitious predecessors.
All the above statements have some truth, and they are just used by some national nihilists as a handle to attack our ancestors, who are so stupid that they don't even know how long their eyes are. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish one from the other for the ancients. Otherwise, wouldn't it be remiss to let those voices that scold our ancestors prick our eardrums every day?
As mentioned earlier, Mr. Guo Moruo pointed out in his article that the horizontal arrangement of Chinese characters is scientific, which is suspected of following the trend. Mr. Guo himself is a master of studying ancient Chinese characters, and he only got together at the moment when the horizontal arrangement of Chinese characters is a foregone conclusion to help them out, but he did not see Mr. Guo carefully analyze the reasons for the vertical writing of ancient Chinese characters. Under the influence of Mr. Guo, if we could scientifically and comprehensively analyze the reasons for the vertical writing of ancient Chinese and the horizontal writing now (I am ignorant and have not seen relevant information), then we would not leave a handle for national nihilists, at least in the way of writing Chinese characters.
Aside from typesetting and printing, Chinese characters are the most suitable for vertical writing. In the way of vertical writing, Chinese characters are written smoothly and coherently, and there is a trend of one go, while horizontal writing is prone to pause and is difficult to achieve momentum. Therefore, most calligraphy works are written vertically, and occasionally horizontal works are not as artistic as vertical works. The reason is that the characteristics suitable for vertical writing have naturally formed in the development of Chinese characters. Chinese characters are composed of five basic strokes: horizontal, vertical, left-handed, right-handed and folded, and these strokes are arranged in two dimensions. When writing Chinese characters, the pen is always written from the left corner or above, and the pen receiving place can be roughly divided into two categories: one is to add a point in the upper right corner, or to raise the pen to the right to bring out a hook, which is suitable for writing a word horizontally on the right, but it only accounts for a small part of Chinese characters; The other type is in the lower right corner or at the bottom of the pen, or in the middle, which is suitable for writing a word vertically below, accounting for most of Chinese characters. What is mentioned here is only the reason why Chinese characters are suitable for vertical writing, which is determined by historical reasons. Putting aside history to talk about science is as unreasonable as mocking Qin Shihuang for not flying.
The earliest Chinese characters discovered today are Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen (Zhong Dingwen). Oracle bones and Zhong Ding are not normal writing materials. The former is only carved with Oracle inscriptions to predict good or bad luck, while the latter is an object with inscriptions, while the real writing materials are things dedicated to writing to record notes or words. Daily experience tells us that people always act according to their habits. Because Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronze inscriptions mostly write vertically, it shows that people were used to writing vertically at that time, and this habit originated from the normal writing tools and materials at that time. According to the habit of vertical writing, we have reason to speculate that at least in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, our ancestors had formed a perfect and skilled writing technology system. Such a writing system is that a knife is used as a writing tool, bamboo pieces or narrow wooden boards (strips) are used as writing materials, and handwriting is carved on bamboo pieces of wooden boards (strips) with a knife.
We have more reason to speculate that our ancestors used knives to carve words on bamboo boards (strips) from the beginning when they began to use symbols to record words. Because the knife has been invented as early as the Stone Age, it is one of the earliest tools used by human beings, and it is also the most widely used tool. Bamboo boards are common and indispensable things in the daily life of our ancestors. Therefore, our ancestors naturally tried to carve graphic symbols on bamboo boards with knives to help them remember. In the process of long-term use, graphic symbols become more and more abundant and standardized, so that more complicated things can be recorded, and finally a perfect writing system can be formed. At the same time, the method of carving words on bamboo boards becomes natural and the skills are more skilled, thus developing into a mature writing method. The main content of The Book of History compiled by Confucius is ancient proclamations, the earliest of which are Yao Dian and Hao Tao Mo. The language features of Confucius' period are rare, which shows that the two articles were not orally passed down to Confucius' era, but were handed down by writing and copying.
engraving on the board with a knife inevitably requires pressing the knife hard, which leads to the problem of fixing the board. Some people will say, isn't it better to put the board on a table or something? In fact, this is impossible: first, in ancient times, there were only short tables equivalent to today's coffee tables, which were dedicated to eating, and the various uses of tables gradually developed after a long time; Second, carving with a knife requires a high skill, so it is carried out by a professional engraver, that is, a knife and pencil official, who has a low status and is unlikely to be equipped with a table for writing; Third, pen and knife collectors should prepare records anytime and anywhere, and it is even less likely to bring a writing desk with them. Therefore, pen and knife officials can only fix the board by their own bodies, which is nothing more than two ways: one is to hold the board firmly with their left hand, and the other is to fix the board with the help of other parts of the body with their left hand.
first analyze the second way to fix the board. At this time, the board is required to be wide, about two feet square, so that one end of the board can be pressed against the abdomen and the other end can be squeezed by the left hand, thus fixing the mother board and making room for the right hand to depict it. Such a board can engrave a large number of words, and from left to right, it can engrave a dozen or even twenty words, so it can naturally be written horizontally. The ancients may have tried this method, but they gave it up for the following reasons: First, because engraving is time-consuming and laborious, it is required that the words used by the ancients to keep notes should be few and precise, and only a few dozen words are used to record one thing, and the large wooden board has a large capacity, which leads to the disadvantages that it is inconvenient if there are many things, but it is a lot of waste if there is one thing. Second, to ensure that the board will not crack when engraving, the board will be thicker accordingly, which will be cumbersome and inconvenient to carry. Third, when writing on the lower part of the board, because it is close to the abdomen, it makes people feel constrained and uncomfortable.
the first way to fix the board is to cut the board width to a certain extent. Ancient calligraphers of knives and pens naturally tried to change a wide board into a narrow board, so they could hold it firmly in the palm of their left hand. Such a narrow board was about four inches wide and two feet long, which was called "Xie". The bamboo slips can be held horizontally or vertically. If you hold the tablet horizontally, it is particularly awkward because the writing place must be in the palm of your hand to facilitate the exertion. When writing, the palms of your hands are opposite and the included angle between your arms is small. Only when the rafters are held vertically and the arms are vertical, can they be relaxed and generous. Since the slips are narrow, it is inconvenient to write less than ten words horizontally, and only vertical writing is more suitable.
To sum up, wide wooden boards or horizontal slips were allowed to write horizontally, but they were abandoned by the ancients because of inconvenience, leaving only vertical slips, which determined that the ancient Chinese writing method must be vertical writing.
According to the area of the slips, each slip can probably write more than 1 Chinese characters, which basically meets the needs of general notes. However, if you record too much at a time and use more than one copy, it will be scattered if you don't bind it well, which will bring inconvenience to later reading, and the copy does have the disadvantage of inconvenient binding. If the bamboo slips are bound, it is probably only necessary to punch holes on one side and then wear them with thin leather strips, ropes or copper rings. However, the edge of the bamboo slips and the bound objects have serious friction and are easy to wear.
therefore, the ancients came up with a method to simplify the bamboo slips into simple strips. Simple strips are easy to be woven into a book, and both ends of the simple strips are tied with wear-resistant thin leather strips, so that many simple strips are connected into a whole, which is convenient to roll and fold, and there is less friction between the leather strips and the simple strips when rolling and folding, so it is durable for a long time. More importantly, as long as the number of slips is appropriate, the rolled-up slips can be held in the palm of your hand, and the left hand can hold the slips extremely firmly, so that the right hand can write hard. Another great convenience of simplified books is that they are easy to carry. A knife and pencil official can carry multiple simplified books with him, which is enough for him to write for several days. In this way, the ancients found two kinds of materials used for normal writing-bamboo slips and simplified books. When recording, bamboo slips are used when the number of words is small, and simplified books are used when the number of words is long.
If the ancients only used the bamboo slips, they could wrap lines from left to right or from right to left when writing vertically. Relatively speaking, it is better to wrap lines to the right. Because, first of all, the writing order of a single word is from left to right. If the order is reversed, the part written first will be covered by the tip of the knife (pen), which makes it difficult to write beautifully. Secondly, a line break to the right will leave the first vertical line on the left, so it will not be covered by the right hand with a knife (pen), which is convenient for reading the previous article. The question is, why did the ancients give up the natural way of wrapping lines to the right, but finally adopted the way of wrapping lines to the left? This is actually determined by the characteristics of the simplified book.
Maybe someone will ask, since there is a simplified book, can you write across it? The answer is no. First, even if the ancients thought of writing on the table, the simplified book was not easy to be fixed on the table, which led to the impossibility of engraving. Second, horizontal writing requires the left hand to hold the simplified book horizontally, which is the same as holding the manuscript horizontally, which is not convenient for engraving. Therefore, the ancient people only used the left hand to hold the slips vertically, and the right hand to write on the outer side of a specific slip with a knife (pen). If writing on the inner side, it would be difficult to fix the slips being written.
There are two ways to wrap words in a simplified book: right and left. Firstly, some basic characteristics of the right line feed mode are analyzed. At this time, the simplified book is required to be rolled up from left to right, so that the simplified book can be rolled up to the left when engraving, so that the short note being engraved is located in the palm of the left hand. There are two ways to scroll the simplified book: first, the short strips full of words are rolled directly from the left wrist, so that the number of the rolled short strips is ok when the number is small, but when the number is large, the rolled short strips are blocked by the left wrist, so that they can't hang down naturally and tilt their wings, which makes it difficult to hold the remaining short strips tightly. Moreover, it is inconvenient to look at the outer side of the left wrist. The second is to roll the short note full of words directly in the palm of the left hand, which will first lead to the previous text being pressed in the palm and inconvenient to view; What's more, after writing a full circle, the outer note is either rolled out from the finger end of the left hand or folded into the hand, which makes it inconvenient to read the previous article. That is to say, no matter how the simplified book is scrolled, it is convenient to view the previous article under the writing mode of wrapping lines to the right. This is only the case of using a knife as a pen. When a brush appears, it is even more impossible to scroll the simplified book directly in the left hand, otherwise it will spoil the words with wet ink.
Line feed to the left requires that the simplified book be rolled up from right to left, and the short notes filled with words can be easily rolled out at the finger end of the left hand. To view the previous article, just lift the rolled-out short notes with the right wrist of a knife (pen). It is this that determines the writing habit of the ancients to wrap lines to the left. In order to unify the writing form, the method of wrapping lines to the left is also adopted on the slips.
Maybe someone will say, after the invention of paper, why didn't the ancients write horizontally instead? This is a matter of habit, and before a large number of western cultures were introduced, it was not too inconvenient to write vertically, so people naturally would not consider changing their habits to adapt to new forms. If you don't believe me, try changing your habit of using your right hand to your left. Isn't that looking for trouble?
To sum up, the writing characteristics of taking the knife as the pen and the simplified book as the writing material determine the way of vertical writing of ancient Chinese prose in China. Is this unscientific?