Since the birth of Oracle, until the founding of New China, Chinese characters have been written from top to bottom and from right to left, which is not just a matter of habit, but the "most reasonable" choice under specific conditions.
In the Yin Shang era, the method of divination was adopted. People first burn turtle shells or cow bones with fire, and then carve words between the formed cracks, which is the oracle bone we have all heard of. From the cultural relics excavated today, we can find that the oracle bone is carved in a way from top to bottom, from right to left, because most people are accustomed to using the right hand, so they naturally start from the right side; and it is more convenient to write vertically along the crack.
Over time, this method became a habit, and later the oracle bone evolved into a gold script, that is, when the inscription on stone or metal (such as Ding) was also continued.
After the Shang Zhou, the more convenient bamboo and wooden jane became the main carriers for people to write words. Whether writing or reading, it will be much more convenient to put away and unfold the book left and right than to operate up and down (we can simulate it with paper), so the stick must be vertical, and can only be written from top to bottom; and when writing, people are holding a pen in the right hand, and the left hand unfolds the follow-up stick, which should naturally be from right to left.
Therefore, in the history of thousands of years, the fixed habit of writing Chinese characters Chinese has been formed. Even when paper was invented and was no longer limited by vertical strips, people still used the original way of writing.
As for worrying about wet ink staining the sleeves, it is actually not necessary. After all, when writing with a brush, the wrist is dangling, and people will not let the sleeves droop.
Until the end of the Qing Dynasty, with the introduction of Western culture, some intellectuals began to actively promote the reform of Chinese characters and advocated learning from the Western horizontal writing mode from left to right. This proposal is not actually a sublime proposal, but a reasonable improvement that is more in line with reality with the introduction of new things:
First of all, about the reasons for changing the top and bottom to left and right.
People's eyes are side-by-side, so it is more labor-saving to see things horizontally than vertically. You can try it, we look left and right to see a banner head almost do not need to turn much, even if it is easier to move; but if you look up and down a couplet, if it is not very far away, you must look up and look down, not so convenient. Even if you read a book, under the premise of equal proficiency, reading left and right will definitely be much faster than browsing up and down.
In addition, there are no Arabic numerals, English letters, and modern punctuation in ancient texts, and with the development of Cultural Exchanges between China and foreign countries, these elements will be used in modern writing, and if they are still placed in the original vertical writing, it is extremely strange.
(Qian Xuantong, the promoter of the reform of horizontal writing)
Second, on why it's left-to-right, not right-to-left.
We Chinese brushes were used in ancient times, and in modern times, pens used by Westerners have become popular. The pen is indeed more convenient than the brush, but the hand must be attached to the paper when writing, not suspended like the brush; and most people write with the right hand, if you write from right to left, the hand and sleeve will definitely make the words that have not dried, and at the same time, they will be very dirty. Change from left to right without this problem.
Of course, we can't think that the ancients' way of writing is relatively backward. In the author's opinion, the Western-style writing style we learn today is indeed very convenient, which is conducive to the popularization and promotion of culture, which is a "tool-type" writing mode; but the way left by the ancestors is an art, and art of course has a threshold