Upside-Down Text Generator (flip text 180° with Unicode look-alike letters)

Understanding the upside-down text generator — concept and principle

Upside-down text looks as if it has been rotated 180°. This generator reverses the order of your text and replaces each character with a look-alike of itself standing on its head, using Unicode's "turned" letters and a few letter swaps. Paste the result into posts, messages or names for a playful effect.

How it is calculated

1. Reverse the order of characters (the last character comes first; the last line moves to the top).
2. Replace each character with its turned form where one exists:

• Unicode turned letters: ɐ (U+0250), ǝ (U+01DD), ɥ, ʇ, Ɐ (U+2C6F), ⅄, and turned digits ↊ ↋
• Letter swaps: b ↔ q, d ↔ p, n ↔ u, 6 ↔ 9
• Punctuation: ¿, ¡, ˙ and swapped brackets

1. Characters without a turned form (capitals B, D, J, P, Q, R, U and digits 1, 4, 5, 7) stay as typed.

Counts: characters turned, letters and digits left as typed, UTF-16 length.

The principle

Rotating text by 180° is the same as flipping it both left to right and top to bottom. Reversing the order handles the position of each character, and replacing each character with its rotated shape handles its appearance. Phoneticians and mathematicians needed several turned letters, such as ɐ and ǝ in the International Phonetic Alphabet, so Unicode already contains many of them. Some letters are naturally rotations of others, like b and q. Because combining marks stay attached to their letter, accented characters remain intact.

Worked example

Default input: "Hello World! Have a good day?"

1. Reversed order: "?yad doog a evaH !dlroW olleH".
2. Turning each character: ? → ¿, y → ʎ, a → ɐ, d → p, g → ᵷ, e → ǝ, v → ʌ, ! → ¡, l → ꞁ, r → ɹ, W → M.
3. Result: ¿ʎɐp pooᵷ ɐ ǝʌɐH ¡pꞁɹoM oꞁꞁǝH.
4. Characters turned = 18; letters and digits left as typed = 0 (H and o look the same upside down).
5. UTF-16 length = 29.

How to read the result

The effect works best with small letters, which almost all have turned forms. Capitals and some digits have no turned version and remain upright, which spoils the illusion slightly. To turn upside-down text back, paste it into the generator again: the mapping works in both directions.

Common mistakes

• Expecting every capital letter to flip; several have no turned form.
• Confusing upside-down text with mirror text, which only flips left to right.
• Using it for names or messages that need to be searchable or read by screen readers.

Frequently asked questions

How do I turn text upside down?

Reverse the order and replace each character with its rotated look-alike, which this tool does automatically.

Why do some capitals stay upright?

Unicode has no turned forms for letters such as B, D, P, R and U.

Can I flip the text back?

Yes. Paste the upside-down text in again and it is turned the right way up.

Does it work with Korean?

Hangul has no turned forms, so Korean characters are reversed in order but not flipped.

Sources: The Unicode Standard 15.1, Unicode Character Database names for the "TURNED" letters (IPA Extensions, Latin Extended-B/-C/-D, Letterlike Symbols) and Number Forms (U+218A, U+218B)