If you were to open a book on the history of typography, you would quickly notice that humanity has tried almost every direction of travel for the written word. We write from left to right (English, Greek), right to left (Arabic, Hebrew), and historically, even back and forth like an ox plowing a field (a style known as boustrophedon found in ancient Greek manuscripts).

However, when we talk about vertical writing, our minds usually jump to the classical heavyweights of East Asia: traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. These scripts follow a very specific gravity: characters stack top-to-bottom, and the columns advance from right to left.

But there is an outlier. There is a “linguistic unicorn” hiding in the steppes of Central Asia. The traditional Mongolian script—known locally as Mongol bichig—is the only major script in active use today that is written vertically from top to bottom, yet with columns that advance from left to right.

To the casual observer, this might seem like a minor formatting detail. To linguists and typographers, however, it is a fascinating paradox that tells a story of empire, adaptation, and a 90-degree rotation that changed history.

The Mechanics of the “waterfall” Script

To understand why Mongolian is so unique, we first have to visualize the mechanics of the page. Imagine reading a standard English book. You start at the top left, read a line across, and return to the left side for the next line.

Now, imagine reading a traditional Japanese novel. You start at the top right corner, read down the column, and then your eyes jump to the top of the next column to the left.

Mongolian defies both conventions. If you open a book printed in traditional Mongolian:

• You begin at the top left corner.
• You read down the first column.
• When you reach the bottom, your eyes move to the top of the next column to the right.

This creates a visual flow that matches the movement of English (progression toward the right) but the structure of Chinese (vertical stacking). It is also a cursive script, meaning the letters within a word are connected continuously. This results in a beautiful, flowing aesthetic often described as a waterfall.

Structurally, the script is built around a strong vertical line called the nuruu (spine/backbone). Individual distinct shapes—often referred to as teeth, bellies, and bows—are drawn attached to this central axis. Unlike English, which rests on a baseline, Mongolian hangs from the heavens.

The Great Rotate: From Horizontal to Vertical

How did the Mongols end up with this unique orientation? The answer lies in a game of “linguistic telephone” played across the Silk Road.

The lineage of the Mongolian script traces back to the Aramaic alphabet (which is also the ancestor of Hebrew and Arabic). Aramaic was written horizontally, from right to left.

Around the beginnings of the Mongol Empire (roughly 1204 AD), Genghis Khan conquered the Naimans and captured a scribe named Tata-tonga, who was an educated Uyghur. Recognizing the power of literacy for administration, Genghis Khan commissioned Tata-tonga to adapt the Old Uyghur script to write the Mongol language.

The Old Uyghur script was derived from Sogdian, which was written horizontally (right to left). However, at some point in the transition from Sogdian to Uyghur to Mongolian, a 90-degree counter-clockwise rotation occurred.

The “Table vs. Scroll” Theory

Linguists have debated exactly why this rotation happened, but the prevailing theory involves the physical act of writing. Sogdian scribes likely held paper rolls (scrolls) in their left hand and wrote with their right. To make writing easier, they may have slanted the paper.

As the script was adopted by the Uyghurs and subsequently the Mongols, the medium changed. When Chinese influence introduced the concept of vertical stone steles and writing on tables (where vertical columns were the prestige format of the region), the scribes adapted their horizontal cursive script to fit the vertical aesthetic of the Chinese court.

However, instead of reinventing the alphabet to function like Chinese characters (which are logograms), they simply rotated their existing alphabet 90 degrees.

Because the original Semitic-based script was read Right-to-Left, rotating it 90 degrees counter-clockwise resulted in a Top-to-Bottom flow, with lines advancing Left-to-Right.

A Typographical Nightmare?

While this orientation is historically fascinating, it presents a significant challenge in the modern digital era. The world of computing was essentially built by left-to-right horizontal readers (Latin script users) and later patched for right-to-left users (Arabic/Hebrew) and classical vertical users (Chinese/Japanese).

Mongolian sits in a difficult intersection of technologies. It requires:

• Contextual Shaping: Like Arabic, a Mongolian letter changes its shape depending on whether it is at the start (initial), middle (medial), end (final) of a word, or standing alone (isolate).
• Vertical Orientation: It must be displayed vertically.
• Left-to-Right Column Flow: This is the kicker. Standard “Vertical” modes in CSS and web standards (known generally as `writing-mode: vertical-rl`) were designed for East Asian scripts that move to the left.

It wasn’t until fairly recently that robust support for `vertical-lr` became standard in major operating systems and browsers. For years, people communicating in traditional Mongolian online had to type horizontally using a rotated font (effectively typing on their side) or send images rather than text.

Survival and Revival

The story of the script’s orientation is also a story of political survival. In the 20th century, underneath Soviet influence, the country of Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) switched to the Cyrillic alphabet (the script used for Russian). Cyrillic is horizontal and left-to-right. For decades, the vertical script was largely sidelined in its homeland, though it remained in active, daily use in Inner Mongolia (an autonomous region within China).

Today, however, we are witnessing a renaissance. The Mongolian government has announced plans to fully restore the traditional vertical script alongside Cyrillic in official documents by 2025. This bilingual, bi-scriptal future means that Mongolian students are once again learning to write continuously down the “spine”, moving their hands from left to right across the page.

Why It Matters

In a world where globalization often flattens cultural quirks, the Mongolian script stands tall—quite literally. Its unique orientation is not just a trivia fact; it is a frozen artifact of history showing the collision of Semitic alphabets and Chinese aesthetics.

It is a script that looks like a vertical waterfall but moves across the map like an army. It serves as a reminder that there is no “default” way for humans to encode language. Whether we look left, right, up, or down, language always finds a way to flow.