Mongolian

The two other writing systems that are represented on this website that are typically written vertically (Traditional Chinese, Japanese) can both be written horizontally without rotating the characters.  Mongolian Bichig, however, is always written vertically and does not have a horizontal option.  However, Unicode has coded Bichig horizontally with the assumption that a text written horizontally would then be rotated 90 degrees clockwise in the final document.  This, however, makes usage on the internet complicated for websites such as this one, where the banner text and page names for navigation must be horizontal.  It also means that most on-line translators and bibliographical archiving programs must use the horizontal orientation.

There is, however, and additional problem with typing Bichig horizontally and then rotating it clockwise 90 degrees.  When you type left-to-right, top-to-bottom and then rotate it 90 degrees, then you must read the text top-to-bottom, right-to left (as in Traditional Chinese and Japanese).  However, Mongolian Bichig is read top-to-bottom, LEFT-to-RIGHT.  There is no natural way to type horizontal Bichig and then rotate it into its proper reading order.

To the right you'll see (from left to right) the title for LOTR as a whole that I am using here and the titles for FR, TT, RK, and Hobbit as printed on the covers.  Because Bichig is rarely found in Western Europe and the US, it is not supported by Google Translate or other common X to English on-line translators.  That limits my ability to find some pieces of information that I use in this website, such as the actual name of the LOTR trilogy as a whole and transliterations of the titles.

In the bibliographic entries I have simply used the Cyrillic titles for the Bichig entries so that they can be read in every browser without difficulty.  Eventually, as Bichig becomes standardized as an official language in Mongolia, the problems in browser capabilities will undoubtedly be rectified.