Outline/reference on the left, work on the right; skeuomorphism or deeper reasons?

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 25, 2018 at 02:10 PM

Prompted by the recent discussion on ultrawide monitors, multiple monitors and/or multiple windows side-by-side on the same screen, I confirmed for myself that when working on most mentally demanding tasks, I tend to place any reference material to the left and do my actual work on the right.

In the physical world, this makes practical sense: I am right-handed, so objects on my right would probably interfere with what I am doing. But I tend to do the same on my main screen: e.g. for a translation, I will split the screen real estate into two windows and keep the original text on the left, while working on my editor on the right.

Looking at software, a similar trend seems to exist. Almost all two-pane outliners that I am aware of show the outline on the left, and the detail pane on the right. The one exception I know is Emeditor, where the outline is produced by a plug-in which can be hidden or shown on the far right, along with other tools https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KmKjcTfzfc I imagine that in some programmes like UltraRecall whose pane positions are customisable, this ‘inverse’ setup can also be achieved; apparently Open Office can do it.

In Word as in many online tools, comments are entered on the right. This could well be a case of skeuomorphism, mimicking the way that most (right-handed) people will scribble their comments on the right margin of a document. Nevertheless it confirms the ‘reference on the left, input to the right’ approach. Not sure if there’s a difference when writing in Right-to-Left languages.

I wonder if there be more to this, e.g. something to do with right- and left- brain processing? Am I missing something obvious?