Re:Book Spines
by splat on Sunday October 24, 2010 @12:37PM
(#1826480)
The practice of printing titles top-to-bottom vs. bottom-to-top seems to be more than a Western Europe vs. Eastern Europe thing, though, because French books (and I think German as well) are printed bottom-to-top just like Russian books.
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Re:Book Spines
by julius_geezer on Sunday October 24, 2010 @01:05PM
(#1826540)
Also Italian.
I really don't care, either, except that it can lead to discomfort when one is browsing a mixed shelf, say at book sale.
Germany: Bottom-To-Top.
I've only seen Top-To-Bottom-Spines on US-Books so far. Also agree with the point, that if a book is lying face-up there's no need for readable spine-text. If it's face-down, there is.
On a stack of books, though, it does make a difference. Books below the top book do not have a readable cover.
All English-language books I've ever seen beside foreign-language books (so that I could notice the distinction) read from top to bottom. It's not just the US.
Given how literary Russian is an artifact of 19th century francophones, it's no wonder.
Re:Book Spines
by patrickgzill on Sunday October 24, 2010 @11:27PM
(#1828366)
Can you explain your view a little more?
I thought that modern Russian literature is generally thought of as being kick-started by Pushkin and his generation.
Yes, and Pushkin was a francophone - most of Russian noblemen were. As were most writers of the 19th century: if you flip through War and Peace, it is easy to notice that much of the book is written plainly in French.
Hence literary Russian is very heavy with borrowings from French, which became so ingrained into the fabric of the language that native speakers don't even notice.