[davidczech]

I'd bet a lot of this behavior is heavily correlated with how we generally read top to bottom, which is in itself, probably an arbitrary decision made by ancient text writers.

[vman81]

Writing top to bottom, and even left to right has/had advantages for mostly right-handed writers to avoid moving your hand over and smudging previously written text.

[InitialLastName]

Writing top-to-bottom has advantages for all writers whose eyes are above their hands. The bit of the writing surface that's blocked by your hand hasn't been written on yet.

[mitthrowaway2]

How would top-to-bottom benefit right-handed writers any more than left-handed ones?

[ks2048]

I’m not sure it’s arbitrary.

For one, starting at the top and ending at the bottom is natural progress of things because of gravity.

I’m not sure if that means anything, but down-to-up seems very unnatural (of coure I can’t ignore my cultural biases). Is there any writing systems like that?

[dylan604]

Just look at how all of the continents tend to be shaped like they are dripping down. That just proves TFA map is upside down.

Any one can make arbitrary reasons to support a decision.

[lovecg]

It is indeed rare, I could find only a single example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanunoo_script

[jama211]

Gravity is just a random natural process to pick for your point. You could just as easily say “bottom to top is natural because that’s the direction trees grow”.

It’s all arbitrary.

[bandie91]

> arbitrary

where is your writing-capable organ relative to your reading organs?