A lookup table, not a rotation
Unicode has no "rotate 180 degrees" operation, so this tool uses a fixed table of look-alike characters borrowed from many blocks. Some come from the International Phonetic Alphabet (ɐ ɔ ǝ ɟ ɥ ɯ ɹ ʇ ʌ ʍ ʎ), some from Latin Extended and phonetic letters (ƃ ᴉ ɾ), some from the Letterlike Symbols block (Ⅎ ⅁ ⅂ ⅄ ⅋), and the rest from mathematics, Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, Bopomofo and Hangul. After substitution, the whole string is reversed, because turning a page upside down also reverses reading order.
Worked examples
hellobecomesollǝɥ: h maps to ɥ, e to ǝ, and l and o stay put.flip mebecomesǝɯ dᴉlɟ.Hello!becomes¡ollǝH, since ! maps to ¡ and H flips onto itself.
| Group | Mapping |
|---|---|
| Letters that swap with each other | b and q, d and p, n and u, M and W |
| Letters that already look the same | l, o, s, x, z, H, I, N, O, S, X, Z |
| Imperfect stand-ins | g to ƃ, j to ɾ, J to ſ, Q to Ò, P to Ԁ |
| Digits | 1 to Ɩ, 2 to ᄅ, 3 to Ɛ, 4 to ㄣ, 5 to ϛ, 6 and 9 swap, 7 to ㄥ |
| Punctuation | . to ˙, ! to ¡, ? to ¿, comma and apostrophe swap, brackets reverse |
Characters with no entry, such as accented letters, are copied unchanged, and they stay in their reversed position, so é stays upright in an otherwise flipped word. The table is case-sensitive; lower-case and capital letters use different symbols.
Upside Down versus Mirrored
The Mirrored button is simpler than its name suggests. It does not use special reflected glyphs. It reverses each line from right to left and swaps only the pairs b and d, p and q, and the three kinds of bracket. So bad pub becomes duq bad, and letters like a, e, s and u stay un-reflected. Lines keep their original order, while Upside Down reverses the whole text, so a multi-line message also has its lines reversed.
Limits
- There is no reverse mode, and the table was not built for decoding, so flipped text cannot be turned back automatically.
- A font that lacks the phonetic or syllabic glyphs may draw empty boxes for a few letters, so check the result on the device where it will be read.
- Search and screen readers see unrelated symbols, not the word. Keep flipped text to chat and decoration.
To only reverse character order with no look-alikes, use reverse text, and for other novelty effects see the glitch text generator.