Right or Left? II

August 24, 2009 by Jerry 

right_or_left

In my previous post you read about the roots of right and left preferences that trace all the way back to our cave-dwelling ancestors and forward to how we read text in Western languages.

The nexus of these two deep roots goes back to the year, 105 AD, when Cai Lun, a eunuch in the court of the Chinese emperor Ho Ti, made paper for the first time, using the bark of a mulberry tree. Prior to that, ancient writing was done on stone with a hammer and chisel. A right-handed person would hold the hammer in the right hand, the chisel in the left, and write right to left; therefore, ancient Hebrew and Arabic text, coming from the Stone Age, reads right to left. Once paper and ink came into use, a right-handed person trying to write right to left, would smudge the wet ink; so in newer languages the direction of text switched. (Thanks to Eyal Waldman, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Mellanox Technologies, for this historical perspective.)

In Western cultures today, reading from left to right is so deeply imprinted in childhood it becomes second nature in adulthood. The innate predisposition of the eyes to move toward the right is irresistible. You can feel it as you scan this very web page or the pages of any book, magazine or newspaper. Try moving your eyes the opposite way from right to left and you’ll feel a resistance.

Video and cinema directors incorporate this dynamic in how they direct their subjects and cameras. Watch a well-directed television drama or film and notice how the characters move across the screen. Most often, the sympathetic characters, the heroes and heroines, move from the left side of the screen toward the right, flowing with the natural movement of the eyes. By contrast, the unsympathetic characters, the villains, move from right to left, fighting the eyes’ natural flow.

Painters incorporate the same dynamic in their still paintings; take for example, Théodore Géricault’s classic work, “The Raft of the Medusa,” (1819) based on an actual story of the survivors of a shipwreck.

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The painting was analyzed in a Wall Street Journal article last week by Professor Willard Spiegelman of Southern Methodist University who wrote:

First and last, there’s action itself. Not just the
waving gestures of the men at the top, but also
the play of sea and light. The wind is blowing from
right to left, against the tilt of the human action.

Whenever you present, you want your audience go with the flow of your ideas; you want to generate positive feelings in them. Therefore, tap into the power of the left to right dynamic in how you design your graphics, animate them, and especially in how you display them: Always present with the projection screen to your left as you face the audience.

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In this arrangement, every time you click to a new slide, the eyes of your audience will travel from you to the screen and across the image easily and naturally. This is particularly important with text slides, so that the audience will take in the words on the screen just as they would in a book. If the screen were to be on the opposite side, it would cause the eyes of your audience to go backwards, against the grain, before returning to take in the words on a second pass.

This dynamic is also applicable in how you animate your slides. The default entry movement of all your graphics should be from left to right—unless you want to send a negative or different message. For more on animation, please see my earlier blog “Animation and the Presenter.”

For now, at the risk of repetition, I’ll conclude this discussion of the powerful forces affecting the eyes of your audiences with my often-stated caveat: Make it easy for your audience, and they will make it easy for you. The alternative is unacceptable.

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Comments

One Response to “Right or Left? II”

  1. bill Nobullshit on June 6th, 2010 1:11 am

    “made paper for the first time, using the bark of a mulberry tree. Prior to that, ancient writing was done on stone with a hammer and chisel.”
    This is a crock of shit. Ever heard of papyrus? The dead sea scrolls? You seriously think paper was invented in 105 ad and before everyone hammered into stone? And furthermore this explains the direction of writing…what about latin?

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