Why should the word "can" be read from right to left?

I copied this elsewhere for your reference.

The ancients respected the right, so writing usually started from the upper right.

First of all, the ancients wrote vertically because they wrote on bamboo slips before papermaking was invented. Bamboo slips and wooden slips are long and narrow pieces of bamboo, which can be rolled into books by stringing them together. The word "book" is a pictograph of bamboo slips. The roll mouth is naturally held by the right hand, and the left hand is convenient to unfold. Therefore, writing is from top to bottom and from right to left.

Secondly, judging from the characteristics of Chinese characters and people's physiological habits, because the right hand writes and the left hand holds the book, the stroke order of a word is naturally convenient from top to bottom and from left to right. If you write from right to left, when writing the left half, the brush will inevitably cover the right half, which is inconvenient to arrange the structure and affects the beauty of the knot. The last stroke of each Chinese character is in the middle or lower right, and the last stroke of the previous word is followed by the beginning of the next word. Vertical writing is more convenient than horizontal writing, and it is more convenient for the consistency of strokes.

Third, the writing of Chinese characters from top to bottom, from right to left, also reflects the ancient people's inferiority complex. In ancient times, being king and being parents; I am a priest, and I am a child. The right side is big and the left side is small. "Mismatch" means no more than. The writing of bamboo slips is bound into a book after writing one article. There is no problem of unfolding before writing, but there is a problem of arranging bamboo slips after writing. Generally speaking, the left hand holds Jane and the right hand writes. Naturally, the left hand is put down after writing. Since it's left-handed, it's probably smoother to row to the left.

Why did the ancients in China write from the right?

The formal writing of China's ancient prose is: vertical books are arranged in rows, one line is filled from top to bottom, and then the lines are wrapped from right to left. Because of the characteristics of Chinese characters, they can be arranged vertically from top to bottom or vertically from bottom to top. At the same time, Chinese characters do not have to be written vertically, but also horizontally, from left to right or from right to left. Historically, in addition to the formal vertical writing method, there are occasional horizontal writing. For example, banners in couplets must be written horizontally.

As far as the writing of Chinese characters is concerned, Chinese characters are most suitable for vertical writing. In the way of vertical writing, Chinese characters are written smoothly and coherently, and there is a trend of one go, while horizontal writing is easy to stop and it is difficult to achieve momentum. Therefore, most calligraphy works are written vertically, and occasionally writing horizontally is not as artistic as writing vertically. The reason is that the characteristics suitable for vertical writing have naturally formed in the development of Chinese characters. Chinese characters are composed of five basic strokes: horizontal, vertical, left, right and folding, which are arranged in two dimensions. When writing Chinese characters, the pen always starts from the upper left corner or above, and the place where the pen is received can be roughly divided into two categories: one is to add a dot in the upper right corner, or to lift the pen to the right to draw a hook, which is suitable for writing a word horizontally on the right, but only accounts for a small part of Chinese characters; The other is in the lower right corner or at the bottom of the pen, or in the middle, which is suitable for writing a word vertically below, accounting for most of Chinese characters. What is said here is only the reason why Chinese characters are suitable for vertical writing, which is determined by historical reasons.

The earliest Chinese characters discovered today are Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen (Zhong Dingwen). Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Zhong Ding are not normal written materials. The former only uses Oracle Bone Inscriptions carvings to predict good or bad luck, while the latter is an object with inscriptions, while the real writing materials are specially used to write notes or words. Daily experience tells us that people always act according to their habits. Because Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jin Wen mostly wrote vertically, it shows that people used to write vertically at that time, which originated from normal writing tools and materials at that time. According to the habit of vertical writing, we have reason to speculate that at least in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, our ancestors had formed a perfect and skilled writing technology system. Such a writing system takes a knife as a writing tool, bamboo chips or narrow wooden boards (strips) as writing materials, and engraves handwriting on bamboo chips of wooden boards (strips) with a knife.

We have more reason to speculate that our ancestors used knives to carve words on bamboo boards (strips) since they began to remember words with symbols. Because the knife was invented as early as the Stone Age, it is one of the earliest tools used by human beings and the most widely used tool. Bamboo board is a common and indispensable thing in the daily life of our ancestors. Therefore, our ancestors naturally tried to carve graphic symbols on bamboo boards with knives to help them remember. In the long-term use process, graphic symbols become more and more abundant and standardized, so that more complicated things can be recorded, and finally a perfect writing system can be formed. At the same time, the method of lettering on bamboo board becomes natural and the skills are more skillful, thus developing into a mature writing method. The main content of Shangshu compiled by Confucius is ancient proclamations, and the earliest ones are Yaodian and Hao Tao Mo. The linguistic features of Confucius period are relatively rare, which shows that these two articles were not passed down orally to Confucius period, but passed down through writing and copying.

It is inevitable to use a knife to engrave words on the board, which leads to the problem of fixing the board. Some people will say, wouldn't it be better to put the board on a table or something? In fact, this is impossible: first, in ancient times, there were only low tables equivalent to today's coffee tables, which were specially used for eating, and the various uses of tables gradually developed after a long time; Second, knife carving requires high skills, so it is carried out by a professional engraver, that is, a knife and pencil official, with a low status, and it is unlikely to match the table to write; Third, pen and knife collectors should prepare records anytime and anywhere, and it is even more impossible to bring a desk with them. Therefore, the penknife officer can only fix the board by his own body, which is nothing more than two ways: one is to hold the board firmly with his left hand, and the other is to fix the board with the help of other parts of his body with his left hand.

First analyze the second way to fix the board. At this time, the board should be wide, about two feet square, so that one end of the board can be pressed against the abdomen and the other end can be squeezed with the left hand, thus fixing the mother board and making room for the right hand to draw. Such a board can engrave a lot of words, from left to right, it can engrave a dozen or even twenty words, and naturally it can be written horizontally. The ancients may have tried this method, but later gave it up for the following reasons: First, because lettering was time-consuming and laborious, the ancients were required to use fewer and more precise words to take notes, and only a few dozen words were used to record one thing, resulting in a large capacity of large wooden boards, which led to many inconveniences and wasted a lot of disadvantages. Secondly, in order to ensure that the board will not crack when carving, the board will be correspondingly thicker, heavier and inconvenient to carry. Third, when writing on the lower part of the board, people feel constrained and uncomfortable because they are close to the abdomen.

The first way to fix the plate is to cut the width of the plate to a certain extent. Ancient calligraphers of knives and pens naturally tried to change a wide board into a narrow board, so that they could hold it firmly in the palm of their left hand. Such a narrow board, about four inches wide and two feet long, is called a "shoe". Bamboo slips can be taken horizontally or vertically. If you hold the tablet horizontally, it is particularly awkward, because the writing place must be in the palm of your hand, which is convenient for exertion. When writing, the palms are opposite and the included angle between the arms is small. It is relaxed and generous to hold the rafters vertically and hold the arms vertically. Because the bamboo slips are narrow, it is inconvenient to write less than ten words horizontally, and only vertical writing is more suitable.

To sum up, wide wooden boards or horizontal slips are allowed to be written horizontally, but they were abandoned by the ancients because of inconvenience, leaving only vertical slips, which determines that the writing method in ancient China must be vertical.

According to the area of bamboo slips, each bamboo slip can probably write more than 100 Chinese characters, which basically meets the needs of general notes. However, if there are too many records at a time and multiple copies are used, the binding will be scattered if it is not good, which will bring inconvenience to later reading, and the copy does have the disadvantage of inconvenient binding. If bamboo slips are bound, you only need to punch holes on one side, and then put them on with thin strips, ropes or copper rings. However, the edges of bamboo slips have serious friction with the bound objects and are easy to wear.

So the ancients came up with a method to simplify bamboo slips into bamboo slips. Simple strips are easy to weave into books, and the two ends of the simple strips are tied with wear-resistant thin leather strips, so that a plurality of simple strips are connected into a whole, which is convenient for rolling and folding, and the friction between the leather strips and the simple strips during rolling and folding is small and durable. More importantly, as long as the number of paper strips is appropriate, the rolled paper strips can be held in the palm of your hand, and the left hand can hold the paper strips extremely firmly, so that the right hand can write with force. Another great convenience of simplifying books is their portability. A knife and pen officer can carry many simplified books with him, which is enough for him to write for several days. In this way, the ancients found two materials for normal writing-bamboo slips and simplified books. When recording, use bamboo slips when the number of words is small, and use simplified books when the number of words is large.

If the ancients only used bamboo slips, they could wrap lines from left to right or from right to left when writing vertically. Relatively speaking, it is better to wrap lines to the right. Because, first of all, the writing order of single words is from left to right. If the order is reversed, the first part will be covered by the tip of the knife (pen), making it difficult to write beautifully. Secondly, a new line to the right will leave the first vertical line on the left, so it will not be covered by the right hand with a knife (pen), which is convenient for reading the previous article. The question is, why did the ancients give up the natural way of winding to the right and finally adopt the way of winding to the left? This is actually determined by the characteristics of Jane's books.

Maybe you will ask, since you have a simplified Chinese book, can you write it horizontally? The answer is no, first, even if the ancients thought of writing on the table, simplified Chinese characters were not easily fixed on the table, which made it impossible to engrave. Second, horizontal writing requires the left hand to hold the simplified book horizontally, which, like the horizontal handshake draft, is not convenient for lettering. Therefore, the ancients only used the left hand to hold the bamboo slips vertically, and the right hand used a knife (pen) to write on the outside of the specific bamboo slips. If you write on the inside, it will be difficult to fix the note you are writing.

There are two ways to wrap words in simplified books: right wrapping and left wrapping. Firstly, some basic characteristics of right line feed mode are analyzed. At this time, the simplified book is required to be rolled from left to right, so that the simplified book can be rolled to the left when engraving, so that the short notes being engraved are located in the palm of the left hand. There are two ways to roll a book in simplified Chinese characters: one is to roll up short strips full of characters directly from the left wrist, so that when the number of rolled short strips is small, it is ok, but when the number is large, the rolled short strips are blocked by the left wrist and cannot droop naturally, and the wings are tilted, so it is difficult to hold the remaining short strips tightly. And it's not convenient to look outside the left wrist. Second, the short note full of words will be rolled directly in the palm of the left hand, which will first lead to the previous words being pressed in the palm, which is not convenient to view; What's more, after writing a whole circle, the external note either rolls out from the left finger or folds into your hand, which makes it inconvenient to read the previous article. In other words, no matter how the simplified book scrolls, it is very convenient to view the last article in the writing mode of wrapping lines to the right. This is just a case of using a knife as a pen. When the brush appears, you can't directly scroll the simplified Chinese characters with your left hand, otherwise you will spoil the characters with wet ink.

A new line to the left requires the book to be rolled from right to left, and the short note full of words can be easily rolled out at the finger end of the left hand. To view the last article, just lift the opened note with the right wrist of the knife (pen). It is this that determines the writing habit of the ancients to wrap lines to the left. In order to unify the writing form, the bamboo slips are also wrapped to the left.