Reading direction

Reading direction refers to the way we read and understand written text in a particular language. In Dutch and most other Western languages, text is read from left to right. This means that when reading a sentence, we first see the word on the left side of the sentence and then move our eyes to the right to read the rest of the words.

Reading direction in different writing systems

However, there are languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, in which the reading direction is from right to left. In these languages, a sentence begins with the word on the right and the reader moves to the left to understand the text. There are also languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, in which the text can be written vertically, from top to bottom, with the columns of characters running from right to left.