Arabic-language book spine direction

[google]

For a book printed for the Arabic market that is bound on the right, does the cover’s spine type read from top to bottom, as spine’s read in the U.S., or from bottom to top?

Thank you,
Rebecca Evans
Senior Designer
UNC Press

[Dick Margulis]

A quick perusal of Google Images suggests that bottom to top is the
direction of choice. However, a great many books have no spine copy
(even though they are thick enough that you would expect it). So you
might consider that option as well.

[google]

Thanks, Dick.

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[Harbs]

The rule of thumb (well the rule for most — I’ve heard that there are those in Germany who have a different opinion) is that you should be able to read the title when a book is lying face-up.

So that means it should be top to bottom whether it’s right-to-left or left-to-right. (because the direction conveniently switches to match the reading direction when you flip a book over…)

Harbs

[google]

Thanks, Harbs. That’s how it looks in images I’ve found on Google but the images are too lo-res for me to be sure of what I’m looking at.

[Dick Margulis]

On 9/16/2015 2:10 PM, Harbs wrote:
> The rule of thumb (well the rule for most — I’ve heard that there are those in Germany who have a different opinion)

France, also. And apparently, from the couple dozen images I looked at,
in at least some Arabic-language publishing centers. It may vary from
country to country, though.

[Harbs]

I don’t have first-hand experience with Arabic books, but all the Hebrew ones I’ve ever seen (or printed) were top to bottom.

I don’t remember where my source for the top to bottom or bottom to top debate was, but a quick search came up with this discussion: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=66006

Either way, the question has nothing to do with the binding direction. It’s whether it should be read-able lying down or standing on a shelf in chronological order.

I’m not sure where you found the images you were looking at. The images that I could make out here all seem to be top to bottom: https://www.google.com/search?q=arabic+book+spine&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CBwQsARqFQoTCM3C9NWz_McCFUzAFAodsnMIOA&biw=1436&bih=763

Harbs

[Dick Margulis]

You searched <arabic book spine>; I searched <arabic book cover design>.
Different collection of images, more of them in Arabic. See what you think.

[Harbs]

Your search definitely got better results, but the ones which are Arabic-only seem to be top-to-bottom.

For example:
http://orig01.deviantart.net/8ca4/f/2009/314/e/3/arabic_book_cover_by_7alo0o0oly.jpg
https://m2.behance.net/rendition/pm/3350881/disp/83537aa0a19baebf9412b45f0b3567f0.jpg
http://elblasy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/albaseetFront.jpg

This one has to have it bottom to top because it needs to be read together with the English (and the binding is left-binding):
http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/culturalconnectives1.jpg