Foreigners Write Backwards

So you have a Cipher Language or your characters write in Wingdinglish. But it needs to be made just a little bit more exotic. How would you do that?

Just mention someone writing it right to left, or top to bottom, or in other directions, and that instantly cements the language's foreignness! This writing order generally also carries over to illustrations or Feelies. The direction of writing is occasionally (now rarely) characterized to be a holdover from writing in ink or clay, the direction preventing a trailing sleeve from smudging the writing.

One particularly popular style of writing seems to be boustrophedonic writing, in which the first line is written from left to right, the second line from right to left, the third line from left to right, the fourth line from right to left, and so on.

Examples of Foreigners Write Backwards include:

Boustrophedonic writing

• Ancient Greek could be written boustrophedon style, which, given that it's also all block capitals and written without punctuation, can be confusing to read.
• On Gor writing is done left-to-right for the first line, then right-to-left for the second, etc.
• Atlanthean is also boustrophedonic.
• Occasionally, geneticists write the code for DNA boustrophedonically.

Other strange writing styles

• The Fairies in Artemis Fowl are mentioned writing in spirals. Later Defied by having the green text horizontal and explaining that the spirals gave the fairies migraines.
• On Fringe, The Observer writes right to left in unintelligible symbols. The Child in the first season, who probably had some connection to the Observer, wrote in English upside down and backwards.
• Japanese is traditionally written from top to bottom, with the columns starting from the right. This is why manga is published "backwards", and why many Western manga-style comics (Megatokyo and Scott Pilgrim for example) will have a message printed on the last page reminding you to read the book starting from the other end because it's NOT from Japan.
  • Chinese can be written vertically or horizontally, left-to-right or right-to-left.
  • Nowadays Japanese and Chinese are often written left-to-right, in emulation of Western languages, in a sort of Real Life subversion of the trope.
• Korean was originally written using Chinese characters and read vertically. When the Korean alphabet, called "hangul", was introduced, it also was written vertically but modern Koreans write horizontally left-to-right. Also, Korean clusters its letters in syllables that, depending on the vowel used, must be read vertically, horizontally, or a combination of both. (If you're confused, look at how these syllables are constructed: da=다, dal=달, dalk=닭, do=도, dol=돌, dolm=돎.)

• "And the Hebrews do it backward, which is absolutely frightening."
• Hivebent: the script used on Alternia is typed right-to-left.
  • Not to mention that the font, Daedric, is written upside down.
• A plot point in the Discworld novel Moving Pictures: A book written in pictograms depicts a "man behind the door", which is translated as "a prisoner". When the Librarian start reading it and follows his read with his finger, the protagonist notices him reading backwards and understand the man is in front of the door, "a guardian".
  • In Mort, the book Death uses to work out who's due to die is read spiralling out from the centre of the page.
• In one of the Professor Branestawm stories, the Professor is puzzled by a letter in mirror writing. While trying to decide what language it is, one that he mentions it definitely isn't is written around the edges of the paper.
• Phyrexian is written upon a continuous line which can go in any direction. A long vertical stroke marks the beginning of each sentence.
• The Lilliputians of Gulliver's Travels write "neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans; nor from right to the left, like the Arabians; nor from up to down, like the Chinese; nor from down to up, like the Cascagians; but aslant from one corner to the other, like ladies in England."
• Arabic and jawi script of Malay language are written from right to left, but the numbers are written from left to right. While normal Arabic does not require special marks/strokes, Quranic verses must be labeled this way to prevent reading errors.
• In A Canticle for Leibowitz, the wandering Jew (well, a wandering Jew) refers to Gentiles writing backwards when he reads what Brother Francis writes on a rock.