What does RTL (right to left) mean?

Question

This is not a joke. I just want to make sure.

Suppose I am writing in a RTL locale. Should it be

                                 !World, Hello

Or

                                 !dlrow, olleH

i.e. Should the RTL be at word-level or sentence-level?

(I am just using English for illustration)

Answer 1

Languages like Arabic customarily start their writing at the top right corner of the page, and produce lines of characters to the left. Such languages are said to be RTL (right-to-left) languages, unlike English which is written from the top left corner and produces lines to the right (an LTR — left-to-right — language).

The data in memory is still stored with the first character first (lowest address), and subsequent characters following, but the data is displayed differently.

Addressing your question about 'Hello, World!', it is done for the whole content, so sentences, or paragraphs, or chapters at a time.

Not:

,olleH !dlrow

but:

!dlrow ,olleH

or even:

                                                                          !dlrow ,olleH

(I'm not sure if that's going to break at the right place for everyone. On my screen, it is as far right as possible.)