http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=126294


in reply to Boustrophedon

Further pedantry:
Boustrophedon is greek for "as the ox plows".
When the alphabet was first borrowed from the right-to-left writing Phoenicians, there was a brief period (c. 8-700 roman bc?) during which this form of writing was actually used by Greek writers before they settled on writing left-to-right.
The word was borrowed from the classicists when mechanical printers appeared.  These printers could clearly go faster if they started each line where they had ended the previous one (which, of course, is also true of oxen).

  p