Editing Rongorongo (section)

===Direction of writing===
{{If mobile
|1=[[Image:Rongo-rongo script.jpg|thumb|left|A closeup of the verso of the Small Santiago Tablet, showing parts of lines 3 (bottom) to 7 (top). The glyphs of lines 3, 5, and 7 are right-side up, while those of lines 4 and 6 are up-side down.]]
|2=
}}
Rongorongo glyphs were written in [[boustrophedon|reverse boustrophedon]], left to right and bottom to top. That is, the reader begins at the bottom left-hand corner of a tablet, reads a line from left to right, then rotates the tablet 180 degrees to continue on the next line. When reading one line, the lines above and below it would appear upside down, as can be seen in the image {{if mobile|1=above|2=at left}}.

However, the writing continues onto the second side of a tablet at the point where it finishes off the first, so if the first side has an odd number of lines, as is the case with tablets '''K''', '''N''', '''P''', and '''Q''', the second will start at the ''upper'' left-hand corner, and the direction of writing shifts to top to bottom.

Larger tablets and staves may have been read without turning, if the reader were able to read upside-down.<ref>Fischer 1997:353</ref>

The direction of writing was determined by such clues as glyphs that twist as the line changes direction, glyphs that were squashed to fit in at the end of a text, and, when a particular tablet does not have such clues, parallel passages between tablets.