I found it surprisingly easy to read the mirrored examples in the article. I think it may be more comfortable -- after a while, at least -- to read the mirrored letters; because we don't read letter-by-letter anyway and the "word image" is intact (just mirrored).

Here's the example image (with mirrored letters): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon#/media/File:Bous...

And here's a non-mirrored version:

  THIS EXAMPLE OF BOUSTROPHEDON TEXT WAS
  AIDEPIKIW EHT ROF YLLACIFICEPS NETTIRW
  ARTICLE  ON  THIS OX TURNING METHOD OF
  TNEICNA  NI TXET HTIW LLAW A GNIREVOC
  GREECE AND ELSEWHERE

You raise a good point in that we don't read letter-by-letter anyway. So, this variant, which leverages recognition of whole words at a time, would have the line tracking advantage of Boustrophedon without the problem of duplicating letters for forward and reverse directions:

  THIS EXAMPLE OF BOUSTROPHEDON TEXT WAS
  WIKIPEDIA THE FOR SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN
  ARTICLE  ON  THIS OX TURNING METHOD OF
  ANCIENT  IN TEXT WITH WALL A COVERING
  GREECE AND ELSEWHERE

While we don't read letter by letter, this does still require some left-right scanning for longer words. In texts (or languages - German?) with many long words, this would be an issue.

The initial method seems to do the best job of not triggering the part of my brain that wants to read normally - which is a benefit, as I can then use a specific reading method for boustrophedon text, rather than fighting against my initial reactions.

Problem here is that if you enter mid-page it's not necessarily obvious which direction to read.

But you can figure it out trivially easily based on which way the letters are flipped.

A sibling comment suggests that it's to help encode the direction, but I wonder if there's a less intentional reason, which is: why not mirror the letters? If I were coming up with conventions for reading and writing for the first time or possibly based on descriptions that some sailor had reported, it's not obvious to me that the direction of the letter should matter, especially if the letters you are using aren't mirror symmetric with other letters (lower case wasn't invented until ~1,000 years after the Hellenistic period, when boustrophedon fell out of favor).

Exactly. And I think the idea to encode direction is a bit anachronistic, in those days they didn't even use punctuation or spaces so it was pretty hard to read anyway, you'd have to do a lot of thinking. And of course with Semitic writing you didn't even encode the vowel sounds.

In hieroglyphic inscriptions the animals etc do face the direction of reading (which varies), but I'm not sure this was in order to help people read it easier.

I was told in my university class that the glyphs faced the direction of reading because they were thought of as talking to the reader. And, of course, it's rude to talk to someone when you're facing away from them.

> it was pretty hard to read anyway

Yes, and they did not invent the space character back then.

the wrtng looks like ths tht my couisn just writes andgets mad if i dont understn him

If you're interested in this concept, you might try BeeLine Reader, which uses line-wrapping color gradients to avoid the line transition errors you describe (and doesn't involve letter flipping). Disclosure: I am the founder!

http://www.beelinereader.com

Please add real Boustrophedon! I'm so interested in what it is like to read longer documents like this.

Wait seriously? So Boustrophedon, with color gradients to pull you down in the right direction? I'll have to play with this (and vanilla Boustrophedon) a bit to see if we want to offer it. Thanks for checking us out, and for the suggestion!

My best guess there is that flipping the letters encodes the reading direction of the line, to make it easier to pick up reading at any specific place.

Hi, this is completely unrelated to this discussion but I can't find any other way to message someone on this website.

In an earlier comment you mentioned being signed up for cryonics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10209152

I'm currently considering the procedure and I'd love to talk with someone who has signed up for it. Could you send me an email please? Nagnazul at gmail dot com

Thank you very much!