I wrote some books that were translated into German, and just noticed that the writing on the spine is "upside down" compared to every other language I've seen. What's up, Germany?

by csferrie

19 comments

  2. Huh, you’re right. I never noticed this. It might be so if you put them in a shelf upright, they’ll be read by tilting your head to the left, so it’s easier read from left to right as is normal for the German language/or because people automatically look to their left when reading because of our left-to-right writing system?

    Except like your example here English also has a left-to-right system but does it like you showed. Strange.

  3. Yes. This is also the case for French and Italian books.

    Reason for that is that it makes the title easier to read when the book is vertical, since as we read from left to right we also tend to tilt our heads to the left to read (although I assume this is mostly because of habit).

  4. Offtopic:
    Thanks for the tip on the apparently very great book series!

  5. It’s well known that English books spines are labelled the wrong around. In Germany text is to be readable from “below or from the right”. 🙂
    (It always annoyed me that in English libraries and bookstores you can’t read the titles of the books in the shelves easily. I can only assume that’s why they also drive in the wrong side to compensate)

  6. Hey, our son loved the „Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie für Babies“! I must have looked at it with him a few hundred times. So fun to see you here.

  9. Some do go the other way and it drives me batty when shelving books. The shelf looks so disorganized!

  10. The idea with bottom to top is that you tilt your head to the left which means that when they are standing upright, you have your head tilted in the correct way to see the cover when you are pulling one out a bit.

  11. I’ve always assumed it’s the same reason as how constructional drawings work. They have to be readable from the bottom and from the right. All text is written that way, never in its head or so it can be read from the left. At least that’s what I learned in school many many years ago when we had to make such drawings.

  12. Since your title is usually on the cover, if the spine is printed that way the title can be easily read when the book lies „face down“ with the cover on the table.

  13. Maybe time for “Symmetry for Babies” – could start with this whole discussion 🙂

  14. it’s not universal, i’ve seen books next to each other on the shelf, pointing in opposite directions. it annoys me.

  15. Wait, you wrote Quanten-Bullshit?! Nice, just finished reading a couple of weeks ago. Awesome read.

  17. Former typesetter here. Yes, that’s the typographic rule in most countries (bottom to top, tilt your head left when the book is upright and the cover opening is on the right). Except in English-speaking countries where it is the other way around.

  19. No, not all books written in German are this way. But it is a significant portion of them.

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