page_title: Boustrophedon
section_title: Other examples
hierarchical_section_title: Boustrophedon / Other examples
caption_attribution_description: A notice outside Lisaa custom school on Pentecost Island, illustrating the use of the Avoiuli alphabet. The main part of the notice is written in Bislama, in boustrophedon style (alternate lines of left-to-right and right-to-left writing) and reads: "sab senta blong melenisian institiut blong tijim saen. filosofi. hiumaniti mo teknoloji. lisa vilij lolovini" (Sap Centre of the Melanesian Institute for teaching signs, philosophy, humanity and technology, Lisaa village, Central Pentecost).
context_page_description: Boustrophedon is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Alternate lines of writing are flipped, or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern European languages, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored. It was a common way of writing in stone in ancient Greece.
context_section_description: A modern example of boustrophedonics is the numbering scheme of sections within survey townships in the United States and Canada. In both countries, survey townships are divided into a 6-by-6 grid of 36 sections. In the U.S. Public Land Survey System, Section 1 of a township is in the northeast corner, and the numbering proceeds boustrophedonically until Section 36 is reached in the southeast corner. Canada's Dominion Land Survey also uses boustrophedonic numbering, but starts at the southeast corner. Following a similar scheme, street numbering in the United Kingdom sometimes proceeds serially in one direction then turns back in the other (the same numbering method is used in some European cities). This is in contrast to the more common method of odd and even numbers on opposite sides of the street both increasing in the same direction.
  Permanent human teeth are numbered in a boustrophedonic sequence.
  In art history, it additionally means that you read from bottom left in a series of pictures; as in the stained glass windows at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.
  Another example is the boustrophedon transform, known in mathematics.
  Sometimes computer printers with a typewriter-like moving type head print boustrophedon text if set up incorrectly.
  Additionally, the Indus script, although still undeciphered, can be written boustrophedonically.
  The Avoiuli script used on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu is written boustrophedonically by design.
caption: Notice in Avoiuli script written using boustrophedon
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "u770SW,S770SW", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "314", "Image YResolution": "314", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Version 1.1", "Image DateTime": "2014:05:05 06:11:35", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "158", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 37, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "7892", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7013", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:05:05 06:11:35", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:05:05 06:11:35", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "361/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "67/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "614", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}