BOUSTROPHEDONIC/baʊstrəʊˈfiːdənɪk/

Of or relating to text written from left to right and right to left in alternate lines.

Mainly of interest to palaeographers, this is a form of writing which occurs principally in very ancient or rare texts. Examples are the rongo-rongo script of Easter Island, some of those in the Etruscan language, a few early Latin inscriptions and some ancient Greek texts created in a transitional period at about 500BC before which writing ran from right to left but afterwards from left to right. The word is itself from the Greek meaning “as the ox ploughs”. It is sometimes used by computer specialists for a form of optimisation in typesetting software or printer drivers.

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