this post gave me an excuse to type backwards

I just learned that, in Arabic, you read from right to left, but you continue to write numbers the way English speakers would write them.

To demonstrate in English, if you have 22.35 cups of sugar, you'd write this:

.ragus fo spuc 22.35 evah I

And not this:

.ragus fo spuc 53.22 evah I

The thought is that you continue reading the number in the same direction as the rest of the text, but that, naturally, when reading a number, you'd want to start with the smallest part and move on to the biggest part! Of course!

I just thought that was kind of cool.

Somewhat germanely, most other nations seem to address their envelopes beginning with the nation and ending with the street address or name -- from big to small. Our unusual ordering seems in keeping with American individualist tendencies. As though Ayn Rand ran the post office.