Why are books bound on the left hand side?

I'm probably missing something very obvious: I can't work out why books (English language, or other langauges that write left to right) are bound on the left hand side, if you place the book flat on a table.

With books developing from loose sheets of paper/whatever, you obviously want the top page of a book, as it rests on the table, to be the first. But if you then bound your first few sheets into one volume, and then next into the second volume, and so on, then, if you picked up the volumes and put them on a bookshelf, the volumes would be in numerical order (from left to right) if the volumes were bound on the right hand side. This would be more convenient than our present system.

So why do we have the binding on the left hand side? It seems just as easy to turn a page forward or backward, as they are under our present system, so I can't find a 'most people are right handed' argument.

Am I missing the bleedin' obvious? Was it just chance, that stayed that way because the first people to bind books chose it without any reason?

On edit: maybe I've just answered my own question - if you had pages 1 and 2 to look at, as seperate pieces of paper on a table, you'd place page 1 on the left. It would then make more sense to put page 3 on the back of page 2, and then page 4 on a new page, and so on, rather than page 3 on a new page, and page 4 on the back of page 1, and so on - which a right-handed binding would imply.

It's still annoying about the volumes appearing in the wrong order when transferred to/from a shelf, though.

not because they turn the page with their right hands because they write with their right hands.

its about the flow of the english language

everything about direction of the english language is because people are right handed.

People are predominantly right handed over the whole world.

be turned from right to left - it refreshes the flow each time you turn the page. Notice that comic books and comic strips flow that way. In Japan, where they read right to leeft the books are bound on the oposite side and their comics flow the oposite way.

Hold the book with the left hand, use the (more dexterous) right hand to turn pages.

To keep books from opening up from the Right! :tinfoilhat:

Originally, books were written on scrolls. They weren't read vertically, one continuous column from one end to the other. They were read horizontally, the scroll was opened up just enough to expose one column of text. Languages that read left to right were scrolled left to right. Languages read right to left were scrolled right to left.

Scrolls could be cut up, and bound in a volume, have the leaves number as pages, and indexed. Bound volumes were known as folios, and they followed the same rules. If you find a bound book in Hebrew of Arabic, its bound on the right.

and so they could be bound on the right hand edge just as easily. I think it's when the question of using the second side of paper comes into it that our convention does become useful.

such as Japan or the Arab countries or Israel, books are bound on the right.

FWIW

...nobody could open them. :)

you are looking at both the "inside" of the leaf on the left, and the "outside" of the leaf on the right (a leaf has two pages, front and back). As we read/write from left to right, you turn the leaf, you "scroll" from left to right, just like you read.

and write from left to right whether or not we are right-handed. At least, most of us do. Binding the right hand side of the book would cause us to read from right to left. Who knows why we are left-to-right oriented? Not me. Maybe it has something to do with following the sun; "sunwise" or "clockwise." Or maybe it's random.

How do they bind their books in China, where they read from right to left? I had a book (I may still have it in storage somewhere)that a student gave me once; it was brought from China, published for Chinese children. I don't remember how it was bound.