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横書きと縦書き Is there a preference for usage? I noticed that Japanese is written
horizontally and vertically.
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2017-06-29T11:59:38.493
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2017-06-30T00:20:44.520
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usage orthography
横書きと縦書き Is there a preference for usage?
Sure!

Whatever you prefer.

;-)

Seriously, though, historically it was mostly top-to-bottom, right-to-left.

Nowadays, it's, well, whatever is convenient, which is mostly left-to-right,
top-to-bottom. But computer software that makes it fairly easy to go top-to-
bottom is improving, so the convenience factor is shifting back a little.

Formal documents do tend more to be top-to-bottom.

If you search the web for 「縦書き」、 you will see that there is a Wikipedia
article:

<https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B8%A6%E6%9B%B8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A8%E6%A8%AA%E6%9B%B8%E3%81%8D>

and if you look at that you will see that there is an English page linked:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts>
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I prefer reading horizontal writing! :)

Right. Based on a cursory look at the books on my wife's bookshelf, as well as
what I generally encounter in day-to-day life, my observation is that vertical
writing is more prevalent for long-form printed material -- novels, manga,
newspapers, and the majority of magazines all use 縦書き.

On the other hand, flyers, (school or company) handouts, and notices
predominantly use 横書き.

And then there's the best (or worst) of both worlds: both in the same
publication. This is pretty common in magazines, where the main article will
be in 縦書き, with picture captions, some headlines, and quotes from the article
will written horizontally, an approach also found in a lot of non-fiction
books, especially those that rely on a lot of visuals.

For handwritten notes, horizontal writing is pretty much the norm unless
you're using 原稿用紙 or doing calligraphy.

Those are just trends I've noticed, however, and I don't have any hard numbers
to back them up.
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2017-06-29T13:25:10.083
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Text printed in horizontal lines read right-to-left used to be common up to
the 1940s but is now pretty much (perhaps entirely) confined to ultra-
conservative/extreme right-wing political material, such as the posters,
usually printed in red and black, that you see pasted on walls and utility
poles. One exception to this rule: names of ships, and company names, etc, on
the sides of vehicles, are written from front to rear, so that on the right-
hand side they read right-left.
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2017-06-29T13:54:35.230
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> 縦書きと横書き Is there a preference for usage?

Yes or No.  
Basically it depends on your preference but usually the circumstances makes
you write horizontally even if you don't prefer.

I have a reason to say so.

As you know the horizontal writing in dominant in Japan except for special
purpose. The main reason is that it is suitable for notation of science such
as mathematical formulas. Once written horizontally, we noticed that it is
indispensable not only in the world of science but also the world of usual
Japanese combined with English, music scores etc. which are inevitable to be
written horizontally, so it is basically an indispesable and convenient way of
writing now in Japan.

The exceptional use mentioned above is basically a traditional art such as
literary works of novels etc, Japanese language textbooks and Japanese ancient
literature expressions such as haiku poems, and calligraphy. One modern
application that allows Japanese to be written vertically is when you need to
write phrases or characters/letters in long vertical margins. Even though
Japanese could be written vertically on utility poles, pillars or vertically
long signboards without any toubles, I feel superiority when I see that
English is written on such places rotated by 90 degrees.
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