boustrophedon – A LaTeX package for boustrophedon typography

This package typesets text in boustrophedon style, alternating the writing direction on each line.

Have you ever wondered why most Western languages are written left-to-right, while many Middle Eastern languages are written right-to-left? Both conventions may seem arbitrary today — but this was not always the case. In one of the earliest fully developed alphabets, the Archaic Greek alphabet (from alpha and beta, hence “alphabet”), writing was often performed boustrophedon, meaning “as the ox turns in ploughing.” Text was written left-to-right on one line, then right-to-left on the next, with both the direction of the text and the letterforms themselves mirrored accordingly.

This method creates a continuous flow of reading, as the reader does not need to jump back to the start of each new line, but instead follows the text in a natural back-and-forth motion. Reading takes some getting used to, but after a while it becomes surprisingly natural.

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