That doesn’t sound right (heh). Left to right was probably from writing being left to right. Up for increasing number just seems natural, maybe because we build up from the ground, stack things up from the bottom.
Comment on Why do some Spanish/English words share the same multiple meanings?
Beefytootz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I don’t recall all of the fun fine details of it, but waaaaaaaay back when, there was a math nerd who was also just as much of a religious nut. He’s the main idea behind why graphs work the way they do. Up and to the right is good, where as down and the left is bad. The direction right became synonymous with godliness and the left direction was for evil, just like up and down. In a weird way, math is hella religious
someguy3@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 6 months ago
I’m guessing that in texts in right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew, graphs would be drawn the other way around, the X axis increasing leftward.
NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social 6 months ago
As an Arabic speaker, our graphs also go from left to right. That said for some reason our number are written from left to right for some reason.
someguy3@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I’ll let you make a post asking.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Right hands became right because most people used them for dexterous tasks- they were correct. Left hands were ‘sinister’- as in the opposite of correct(more accurately: contrary/false/unfavorable. It comes from the Latin sinister which was the opposite of “dexter”,)
Charts were left-to-right in large part because most of the languages/alphabets in surrounding the chart were also left to right- Greek and Latin alphabets come to mind. (Arabic would be a noted exception. IIRC Asian alphabets tend to write top down first.)
I assume that most languages were written left to right simply because it was cleaner- ask a lefty about their troubles. Left to right and top to bottom keeps your hand from going over and maybe smudging freshly written text for a right handed person.