Editing Mirror writing

{{Short description|Text written in the opposite to usual direction}}
{{For|the album by Jamie Woon|Mirrorwriting}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
[[File:2007-08 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter.jpg|thumb|right|Mirror writing on the hood of an ambulance in Australia]]

'''Mirror writing''' is formed by writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language, such that the result is the [[mirror image]] of normal writing: it appears normal when reflected in a [[mirror]]. It is sometimes used as an extremely primitive form of [[cipher]]. A common modern usage of mirror writing can be found on the front of [[ambulance]]s, where the word "AMBULANCE" is often written in very large mirrored text, so that drivers see the word the right way around in their [[rear-view mirror]]. It is also on [[Fire engine|fire engine]]s and [[Police car|police car]]s too.

Some people are able to produce handwritten mirrored text. Notably, [[Leonardo da Vinci]] wrote most of his personal notes in this way.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jones |first=Roger |date=2012-06-01 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: anatomist |url=https://bjgp.org/content/62/599/319 |journal=British Journal of General Practice |language=en |volume=62 |issue=599 |pages=319 |doi=10.3399/bjgp12X649241 |issn=0960-1643 |pmid=22687222|pmc=3361109 }}</ref>
Mirror writing [[calligraphy]] was popular in the [[Ottoman Empire]], where it often carried mystical associations.{{citation needed|date=March 2025}}

==Ability to write mirrored text==
[[File:Mirror read.jpg|thumb|An example of how mirror flips text front to back rather than left to right. This cardboard word is reflected properly in the mirror without being flipped.]]
An informal Australian newspaper experiment identified 10 true mirror-writers in a readership of 65,000.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/06/02/1119739.htm|title=Mirror writing: my genes made me do it|first=2 June 2004 Anna SallehABC|last=Wednesday|date=2 June 2004|website=www.abc.net.au}}</ref> A higher proportion of [[left-handedness|left-handed]] people are better mirror writers than right-handed people, perhaps because it is more natural for a left-hander to write from right to left.<ref name=Jama>{{cite journal|last1=Schott|first1=G. D.|title=Mirror Writing, Left-handedness, and Leftward Scripts|url=http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=787244|journal=Archives of Neurology|year=2004|volume=61|issue=12|pages=1849–51|doi=10.1001/archneur.61.12.1849|pmid=15596604|doi-access=|url-access=subscription}}</ref> 15% of left-handed people have the language centres in both halves of their brain.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} The [[cerebral cortex]] and [[motor homunculus]] are affected by this, causing the person to be able to read and write backwards quite naturally.

In an experiment conducted by the Department of Neurosurgery at Hokkaido University School of Medicine in Sapporo, Japan, scientists proposed that the origin of mirror writing comes from damage caused through brain trauma or neurological diseases, such as an essential tremor, Parkinson's disease,<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Shinohara |first1=Mayumi |last2=Yokoi |first2=Kayoko |last3=Hirayama |first3=Kazumi |last4=Kanno |first4=Shigenori |last5=Hosokai |first5=Yoshiyuki |last6=Nishio |first6=Yoshiyuki |last7=Ishioka |first7=Toshiyuki |last8=Otsuki |first8=Mika |last9=Takeda |first9=Atsushi |last10=Baba |first10=Toru |last11=Aoki |first11=Masashi |last12=Hasegawa |first12=Takafumi |last13=Kikuchi |first13=Akio |last14=Narita |first14=Wataru |last15=Mori |first15=Etsuro |date=2022-12-14 |title=Mirror writing and cortical hypometabolism in Parkinson's disease |journal=PLOS ONE |language=en |volume=17 |issue=12 |pages=e0279007 |doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0279007 |issn=1932-6203 |pmc=9750002 |pmid=36516196|bibcode=2022PLoSO..1779007S |doi-access=free }}</ref> or spino-cerebellar degeneration. This hypothesis was proposed because these conditions affect a "neural mechanism that controls the higher cerebral function of writing via the thalamus."<ref>{{cite journal | pmc = 1032596 | pmid=3437291 | volume=50 | title=The aetiology of mirror writing: a new hypothesis | year=1987 | journal=J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry | pages=1572–8 |vauthors=Tashiro K, Matsumoto A, Hamada T, Moriwaka F | issue=12 | doi=10.1136/jnnp.50.12.1572}}</ref>
Another study by the same university discovered that damage was not the only cause. The scientists observed that normal children exhibited signs of mirror writing while learning to write, thus concluding that currently there is no exact method for finding the true origin of mirror writing.

==Notable examples==
[[File:Da Vinci mirror writing.jpg|thumb|right|The notes on [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s famous ''[[Vitruvian Man]]'' image are in mirror writing.]]
[[Leonardo da Vinci]] wrote most of his personal notes in mirror writing, only using standard writing if he intended his texts to be read by others.  The purpose of this practice by Leonardo remains unknown, though several possible reasons have been suggested. For example, writing left handed from left to right would have been messy because the ink just put down would smudge as his hand moved across it.  Writing in reverse would prevent such smudging. An alternative theory is that the process of rotating the linguistic object in memory before setting it to paper, and rotating it before reading it back, was a method of reinforcement learning. From this theory, it follows the use of [[Boustrophedon|boustrophedonic]] writing, especially in public codes, may be to render better recall of the text in the reader.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

[[Matteo Zaccolini]] may have written his original four volume treatise on optics, colour, and perspective in the early 17th century in mirror script.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}{{explain|date=December 2021}}

[[File:Mirror writing2.jpg|thumb|Eighteenth-century mirror writing in [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] [[calligraphy]]. Depicts the phrase ''Ali is the vicegerent of God'' in both directions.]]
Pictorial texts also known as calligrams arranged in mirror symmetry were popular in the [[Ottoman Empire]] during the 18th and 19th centuries among the [[Bektashi]] order, where it often carried mystical associations.<ref name="hdl.loc.gov">Library of Congress image bibliographic data.[http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.amed/ascs.147]  Retrieved 19 January 2009.</ref> The origins of this mirror writing tradition may date to the pre-Islamic period in rock inscriptions of the western Arabian peninsula.<ref name="hdl.loc.gov"/> A recent study that has revealed the oldest examples of mirror writing  in Greek{{clarify|reason=does "mirror writing" in this usage not include Boustophedon (alternating lines of nornal and mirrored text, thus 50% of text is "mirror writing"). This should be specified, that "oldest example" means oldest example of a whole text being in mirror writing, since there are FAR OLDER examples of Greek mirror writing, but with half the text mirrored and the other half normal|date=December 2021}} traces the early appearance of mirror inscriptions to Late Antiquity, specifically to Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and Constantinople.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}} In Islamic art, mirror calligraphy is known as muthanna or musanna.<ref>[http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=810112 Esra Akın-Kıvanç, Muthanna / Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy: History, Theory, and Aesthetic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020)]</ref>

Peep show images shown in a [[zograscope]] have headers in mirror writing.
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== See also ==
* [[Ahriman]] – Middle Persian word traditionally written upside down
* {{annotated link|Ambigram}}
* [[Faux Cyrillic]] – Several Cyrillic alphabet characters closely resemble mirrored Latin characters

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==External links==
* {{Commons category-inline|Mirror writings}}
* [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117809/ Mirror writing: neurological reflections on an unusual phenomenon]
* {{Cite web|date=|title=Acquired mirror writing and reading: evidence for reflected graphemic representations|author=Jay A. Gottfried, Kruba Sundar, Feyza Sancar, [[Anjan Chatterjee (neuroscientist)|Anjan Chatterjee]]|url=http://ccn.upenn.edu/~chatterjee/anjan_pdfs/mirrorwrite.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100614184842/http://ccn.upenn.edu/~chatterjee/anjan_pdfs/mirrorwrite.pdf|archive-date=14 June 2010|access-date=|website=}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mirror Writing}}
[[Category:Writing direction]]
[[Category:Mirrors]]