It makes sense -- but I would never have thought of it

For our work at the newspaper we had a list of journalism standards – things like using more than one source and checking facts and aiming your articles at regular people not politicians – translated into Arabic.

The final document was three pages long and we were late leaving the office for the newsroom, so we piled into the car and as we drove, me and Del collated pages and we handed Nadir the stapler.

Good thing we did. I looked over to see him stapling one handout after another at the top right-hand corner. The opposite of where we usually see staples.

Ok, it’s so stupid, but I never would have thought of that. Arabic is read right to left also the opposite of us so, of course, the staple has to move too.

It gave me the same queasy feeling I had the time I followed a crowd up a busy Tokyo escalator and they got on on the left side with people going down to their right. Weird. It’s one thing to drive on a different side of the road, but they walk on that unaccostomed side too.

The right-to-left reading habit here intrigues us in other ways. We have begun researching to see if anything has been done about newspaper design and eye-tracking patterns when the writing flows in that direction.
Today we met with the newspapers’ talented cartoonist and he asked us if we could figure out the joke in this:

2 < 1

(In his drawing the numeral 1 was twice as large and in bolder black than the 2.)

So Del and I are going: Two is less than 1. Two is less than 1. No we don’t get it.

We were reading it backward. The piece says 1 is greater than 2, an illogical statement that explained in this case how some people, celebrities and VIPS, can amount to -- or be treated as if they account for -- more than other people.