Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
So why start out horizontal at all? It is a waste in the long run.
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I think it's for the convenience of textbook layout designers. Imagine how hard it would be for someone to do a layout for a book that explains a couple paragraphs in English, then switches to vertical examples, and back and forth. It would make textbooks longer and less profitable.
That's almost assuredly the reason all American students learn Japanese in the English orientation.
Is there a way to do web pages vertically? I know you can designate text right-to-left so Hebrew and Arabic display properly. Can you designate top-to-bottom, too? It would be awesome to be able to do that.
Edit Aha! A little googling around reveals there's a property in CSS3 (the new standard currently under development for document appearance on the web) that enables 縦書き.