Backwards Letters (Mirror Text)

There is no backwards font. Each mirrored letter here is a real character from some other writing system that happens to look like a Latin letter seen in a mirror. Я, И and Э are the Russian letters ya, i and e. ɘ, ɿ, ɒ and ɔ are letters of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Ↄ, ꟻ and ꟼ come from Roman inscriptions. ꓘ, ꓷ, ꓨ, ꓞ and ꓭ are letters of Lisu, a language of China and Myanmar whose Fraser alphabet of 1915 makes its extra letters by turning and reversing Latin capitals. ᗡ, ᙠ, ᒐ and ᘔ are Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, a script in which one shape is written in four orientations for four vowels, so it is full of flipped Latin look-alikes. ∃ and ∂ are maths symbols, Γ and Ϙ are Greek, მ and Ⴑ Georgian, ວ Lao. A backwards letter generator cares only about the shape.

Mirror text takes two steps, like upside down text. The letters are written in reverse order, then each one is swapped for its mirrored look-alike: hello becomes ollɘʜ and mirror text becomes ɟxɘɟ ɿoɿɿim. Hold the screen up to a mirror, or point your phone's front camera at it, and it reads the right way round. Plain backwards text, the kind a backwards text generator or translator makes, is only the first step: olleh, normal letters in reverse order, with no special characters at all.

Backwards letters and upside down letters are different flips and mostly different characters. A mirror swaps left and right, so Ǝ is a mirrored E while ∀ is an upside down A. Letters that are symmetrical from left to right (A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X, Y) do not change in a mirror at all, and b and d, p and q simply trade places. For the other flip see Upside Down Letters (Upside Down Text).

The mirror alphabet, letter by letter

Capitals: A A, B ᙠ, C Ↄ, D ᗡ, E Ǝ, F ꟻ, G ꓨ, H H, I I, J ᒐ, K ꓘ, L ⅃, M M, N И, O O, P ꟼ, Q Ϙ, R Я, S Ƨ, T T, U U, V V, W W, X X, Y Y, Z Z. Eleven capitals are their own mirror image. Q and Z are the weak spots: Ϙ, the archaic Greek koppa, is a Q with its tail straight down rather than a true mirrored Q, and nothing looks like a mirrored Z, which is simply an angular S, so generators leave Z alone. Where a letter has more than one usable form they are all in the grid: ꓭ and ᗺ for B, Ɔ and ꓛ for C, ꓷ for D, ∃ and Э for E, ꓞ for F, ວ for G, Ⴑ for J, Ʞ for K, ᴎ for N, ᴙ for R and Ꙅ for S.

Small letters: a ɒ, b d, c ɔ, d b, e ɘ, f ʇ, g ƍ, h ʜ, i i, j ᒑ, k ʞ, l l, m m, n n, o o, p q, q p, r ɿ, s ƨ, t ɟ, u u, v v, w w, x x, y y, z z. The honest holes: nothing in Unicode looks like a mirrored h, y or z, so ʜ, a small capital H, stands in for h, and y and z stay as they are. ʇ and ɟ are really a turned t and a barred dotless j, which is why they pass for a mirrored f and t. Unicode does have its own reversed small letters, 𝼁 (reversed script g) and 𝼃 (reversed k), added in 2021 for phonetic transcription, but most fonts still show them as boxes. ↄ, э, я, ꙅ, ǫ and ƚ are further alternatives for c, e, r, s, g and t.

Digits: 0 0, 1 1, 2 ᘔ, 3 Ɛ, 6 ∂, 7 Γ, 8 8, 9 ᑫ. The digits 4 and 5 have no mirrored look-alike at all, and Ƹ, Ԑ and მ are second choices for 3 and 6. Punctuation does better, because here Unicode has real reversed characters: the reversed question mark ⸮, reversed semicolon ⁏, reversed comma ⹁, reversed primes ‵ ‶ ‷, reversed pilcrow ⁋ and reversed not sign ⌐, plus the high and low reversed quotation marks ‛ ‟ ⹂. The Arabic question mark ؟ and comma ، are mirrored by design, because Arabic runs from right to left. Brackets swap partners in a mirror, ( becomes ) and [ becomes ], and so do the slashes: / becomes \.

Backwards E, backwards R, backwards N: the letters people search for

Most searches for a single backwards letter are about one of three. The backwards E has four different answers. Ǝ is Unicode's reversed E, a letter in several languages of Nigeria and Cameroon and the standard mirror text E. ∃ is the maths symbol "there exists", introduced by Giuseppe Peano in 1897; it is the one you want in a logic formula and it lives in Math Symbols. Э is the Russian letter e, as in это (this). And ǝ, which looks the same in many fonts, is the turned e of upside down text. The small ɘ is the phonetic reversed e, a close-mid central vowel.

The backwards R is Я, the Russian letter ya, which on its own is the word "I". The backwards N is И, the Russian letter i, which on its own means "and". Neither is backwards in Russian, which is why TOYS Я US styling reads as gibberish to a Russian speaker. Spelling English words with Cyrillic look-alikes has its own page, Faux Cyrillic Letters; the backwards R and N are the two letters it shares with mirror text. ᴙ and ᴎ are the Latin small capital versions phoneticians use.

The backwards C is Ↄ or ɔ. Ↄ is the Roman "reversed one hundred": in Roman numerals IↃ was 500 and CIↃ was 1,000, and the letter D grew out of IↃ. The small ɔ is the open o of the IPA, the vowel of thought in British English. The backwards L is ⅃, added to Unicode in 2002, and the backwards 3 is Ɛ, the open E of the IPA, which also serves as the heart in the old emoticon Ɛ>.

Where backwards letters work, and where they break

Everything on this page is plain text, so it pastes wherever text goes: Instagram, TikTok and X bios and captions, WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord messages, Discord and Steam display names, YouTube comments, Word, Google Docs and spreadsheet cells. Usernames and handles are the exception: most platforms allow only plain letters, digits, dots and underscores there, so keep backwards letters for display names and bios. Fonts are the other limit. The Cyrillic and phonetic letters Я И Э ɘ ɿ ɒ ɔ render everywhere. The Lisu and Canadian syllabic letters ꓘ ꓷ ꓨ ᗡ ᙠ ᒐ ᘔ need a font that covers those scripts, which every current phone and desktop has but some game and embedded fonts do not. 𝼁 𝼃 𝼇 from 2021 and the epigraphic ꟻ ꟼ are the most likely to show as boxes.

Two things mirror text cannot do. It is not searchable: a backwards word is a string of Cyrillic, phonetic and Lisu letters, so search finds nothing and spell-checkers underline everything. And it is not accessible: a screen reader announces what is really there, "Cyrillic capital letter ya" for Я, "Latin small letter reversed e" for ɘ, "Lisu letter kha" for ꓘ, or skips the character. A mirrored sentence is meaningless to a blind reader, so use it for a name or a visual joke and repeat anything that matters in plain text.

In design the backwards letter is a classic. The ABBA logo has mirrored its first B since 1976, Toys "Я" Us reversed its R to look like a child's handwriting, and Korn's singer Jonathan Davis drew the band's logo with a backwards R in the same spirit. The word AMBULANCE is printed mirrored on the front of ambulances, ƎↃИA⅃UᙠMA in these characters, so that drivers read it correctly in their rear-view mirrors. In children's handwriting, backwards letters and b/d, p/q swaps are normal until about age seven or eight; on their own they are not a sign of dyslexia, though reversals that persist alongside reading difficulty are worth an assessment.

How to mirror text in Word, Canva and Photoshop, and how to type backwards letters

If you only need the look, the design tools flip real text. In Word, put the text in a text box or WordArt, then Shape Format → Text Effects → 3-D Rotation → 3-D Rotation Options and set X Rotation to 180°. In Canva, select the text and choose Flip → Flip horizontal. In Photoshop, use Edit → Transform → Flip Horizontal on the text layer. In AutoCAD, set the MIRRTEXT variable to 1 before the MIRROR command, otherwise the mirrored copy keeps its text readable. All of these are formatting: the moment the text is copied into a chat or a bio it turns back into normal letters.

For text that stays mirrored anywhere, use the characters. Tap any letter in the grid to copy it, or copy a finished phrase from the combos below; a backwards letters generator does the same two steps, reverse the order and swap each letter from this table. In Word you can type a code and press Alt + X: 042F gives Я, 018E gives Ǝ, 2183 gives Ↄ, 2143 gives ⅃, 0258 gives ɘ, 027F gives ɿ, 2E2E gives ⸮. Я, И and Э are ordinary keys on a Russian keyboard layout, which any phone or computer can add in a minute. On a Mac the Character Viewer (Control + Command + Space) finds any of them by name, "reversed e" or "Cyrillic ya".

Related pages: Upside Down Letters (Upside Down Text) for the other flip, Faux Cyrillic Letters for Я and И spelling English words, IPA Phonetic Symbols for ɘ ɿ ɒ ɔ in their day job, Letter Emoji & Alphabet Symbols for every other alphabet style, Greek Letters for Γ and Ϙ, and Punctuation Symbols for ⸮ and ⁋ among their relatives.