Backwards Letters: The Full Mirrored Alphabet to Copy and Paste

Backwards letters are characters that look like normal letters flipped left to right, such as Ǝ, Я and ɘ. Unicode has no official backwards alphabet, so every mirrored letter you can copy is borrowed from another writing system or a phonetic alphabet that happens to contain the right shape. Below is the full mirrored alphabet A to Z, plus reversed numbers and punctuation, with each character’s code point so you know exactly what you are pasting. To flip whole words automatically, use the free Mirror Text Generator.

Backwards Alphabet to Copy and Paste

Select and copy either line. These are the same characters our generator uses, so the results match.

Lowercase: ɒ d ɔ b ɘ ʇ ϱ ʜ i ᒑ ʞ l m n o q p ɿ ꙅ ƚ u v w x γ ꙃ
Uppercase: A ᙠ Ɔ ᗡ Ǝ ᖷ ᘓ H I ᒐ ꓘ ⅃ M И O ꟼ Ϙ Я Ꙅ T U V W X Y Ƹ
Numbers:   0 1 ς Ɛ ᔭ ट მ Ⲋ 8 ୧

Backwards Lowercase Letters

Lowercase letters not listed here (i, l, m, n, o, u, v, w and x) are symmetrical enough that they look the same in a mirror, so they stay unchanged.

Letter	Backwards	Code point	Where the character comes from
a	ɒ	U+0252	Latin turned alpha (IPA)
b	d	U+0064	Plain Latin d
c	ɔ	U+0254	Latin open o (IPA)
d	b	U+0062	Plain Latin b
e	ɘ	U+0258	Latin reversed e (IPA)
f	ʇ	U+0287	Latin turned t
g	ϱ	U+03F1	Greek rho symbol
h	ʜ	U+029C	Latin small capital H (no reversed h exists)
j	ᒑ	U+1491	Canadian Syllabics
k	ʞ	U+029E	Latin turned k
p	q	U+0071	Plain Latin q
q	p	U+0070	Plain Latin p
r	ɿ	U+027F	Latin reversed r with fishhook (IPA)
s	ꙅ	U+A645	Cyrillic reversed dze
t	ƚ	U+019A	Latin l with bar
y	γ	U+03B3	Greek gamma (no reversed y exists)
z	ꙃ	U+A643	Cyrillic dzelo

Four of these are swaps rather than special characters: a mirrored b is simply a d, and a mirrored p is a q. Two letters, h and y, have no reversed form anywhere in Unicode, so the closest symmetrical lookalikes (ʜ and γ) are used instead.

Backwards Capital Letters

Capitals A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X and Y are already symmetrical left to right, so they need no replacement.

Letter	Backwards	Code point	Where the character comes from
B	ᙠ	U+1660	Canadian Syllabics (Carrier)
C	Ɔ	U+0186	Latin capital open O
D	ᗡ	U+15E1	Canadian Syllabics (Carrier)
E	Ǝ	U+018E	Latin capital reversed E
F	ᖷ	U+15B7	Canadian Syllabics (Blackfoot)
G	ᘓ	U+1613	Canadian Syllabics (Carrier)
J	ᒐ	U+1490	Canadian Syllabics
K	ꓘ	U+A4D8	Lisu letter KHA
L	⅃	U+2143	Reversed sans-serif capital L
N	И	U+0418	Cyrillic capital I
P	ꟼ	U+A7FC	Latin epigraphic reversed P
Q	Ϙ	U+03D8	Greek archaic koppa
R	Я	U+042F	Cyrillic capital Ya
S	Ꙅ	U+A644	Cyrillic capital reversed dze
Z	Ƹ	U+01B8	Latin capital reversed ezh

Backwards Numbers and Punctuation

The digits 0, 1 and 8 read the same mirrored. The rest use lookalike shapes from other scripts.

Character	Backwards	Code point	Where the character comes from
2	ς	U+03C2	Greek final sigma
3	Ɛ	U+0190	Latin capital open E
4	ᔭ	U+152D	Canadian Syllabics
5	ट	U+091F	Devanagari letter TTA
6	მ	U+10DB	Georgian letter MAN
7	Ⲋ	U+2C8A	Coptic capital SOU
9	୧	U+0B67	Odia digit one
?	⸮	U+2E2E	Reversed question mark
;	⁏	U+204F	Reversed semicolon

Why Unicode Has No Real Backwards Alphabet

The Unicode Standard encodes characters, not visual effects. A mirrored A is still the letter A, so Unicode does not give it a separate code point, in the same way it has no “italic A” for ordinary text. Flipping text is treated as a job for fonts, graphics software or CSS, not for the character set.

Backwards letters only exist as copyable text because other writing systems contain shapes that look like flipped Latin letters. The tables above draw on seven different sources:

• The International Phonetic Alphabet: ɘ, ɔ and ɿ are phonetic symbols. In the IPA, ɘ represents a close-mid central vowel and ɔ an open-mid back rounded vowel.
• Cyrillic: Я (Ya) and И (I) are ordinary Russian letters. Ꙅ and ꙅ (reversed dze) come from early Cyrillic manuscripts.
• Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics: ᗡ, ᙠ and ᘓ are letters used for Carrier, and ᖷ for Blackfoot. Syllabics are used to write Indigenous languages such as Cree and Inuktitut.
• Lisu: ꓘ is a letter of the Fraser alphabet used for the Lisu language.
• Latin epigraphic letters: ꟼ and its sibling ꟻ (reversed F) record reversed letters found in ancient Latin inscriptions.
• Greek, Coptic, Georgian, Devanagari and Odia: used for lookalike digits and for ϱ, γ and Ϙ.
• Letterlike symbols and punctuation: ⅃ (reversed sans-serif L), ⸮ and ⁏.

Genuinely Reversed Characters in Unicode

Most backwards letters are lookalikes, but a few code points are officially named “reversed” in the Unicode code charts. If you need one specific mirrored letter and accuracy matters, these are the closest you can get:

Character	Code point	Official Unicode name
ɘ	U+0258	Latin small letter reversed e
Ǝ	U+018E	Latin capital letter reversed E
ɿ	U+027F	Latin small letter reversed r with fishhook
ᴎ	U+1D0E	Latin letter small capital reversed N
ᴙ	U+1D19	Latin letter small capital reversed R
⅃	U+2143	Reversed sans-serif capital L
ꟻ	U+A7FB	Latin epigraphic letter reversed F
ꟼ	U+A7FC	Latin epigraphic letter reversed P
⸮	U+2E2E	Reversed question mark
⁏	U+204F	Reversed semicolon

ᴎ and ᴙ are useful alternatives to the Cyrillic И and Я when you want a reversed N or R that is still a Latin letter. The reversed question mark has a history of its own: the printer Henry Denham proposed it in the 1580s as a “percontation point” to mark rhetorical questions.

Backwards E vs. the “There Exists” Symbol

Ǝ (U+018E) is easy to confuse with ∃ (U+2203), the mathematical symbol for “there exists”. They look almost identical but are different characters. Use Ǝ in names and words, and ∃ only in logic or maths, so search and copy behave as expected.

Where Backwards Letters Break

• Empty boxes: if a device has no font containing a character, it shows a box or question mark instead (often called “tofu”). Characters from less common blocks, such as Canadian Syllabics, Lisu and the Latin epigraphic letters, are the most likely to fail on older phones. Test your text on the device your audience uses.
• Search and hashtags: a backwards word is made of different characters, so search engines and in-app search will not match it to the normal word. Keep keywords you want found in plain text.
• Usernames and game names: many platforms only allow basic Latin letters in handles, so mirrored characters may be rejected or stripped.
• Spell check and translation: Я and И are real Cyrillic letters, so autocorrect and translation tools may treat your text as Russian.

Backwards Letters and Accessibility

Screen readers read characters by what they are, not how they look. A word written as ƎЯIM may be read out letter by letter, announced as foreign characters, or skipped, so people using assistive technology will not hear the word you meant. WebAIM’s guide to screen readers explains how these tools interpret text. Use backwards letters for short decorative touches, and keep names, links and important information in plain text.

Backwards Letters vs. Mirror Text vs. Upside Down Text

Backwards letters are the individual characters. Mirror text uses them and also reverses the letter order, so a whole word reads correctly in a mirror. Upside down text rotates letters 180 degrees with a different character set. For step-by-step methods in Word, Google Docs, Canva and Cricut, see how to mirror text. For rotated text, try the Upside Down Text Generator.

How to Type Backwards Letters

• Any device: copy from the tables above, or type a word into the Mirror Text Generator and copy the result.
• Windows: in Microsoft Word, type the code point without “U+” (for example 018E) and press Alt+X to turn it into Ǝ.
• Mac: open the Character Viewer with Control+Command+Space and search for the character name, such as “reversed e”.
• Linux (GTK apps): press Ctrl+Shift+U, type the code point and press Enter.
• HTML: use a numeric entity, for example Ǝ for Ǝ.

For more decorative characters to pair with these, browse our aesthetic symbols list or the copy and paste fonts guide. For spooky Old English lettering, try the gothic text generator.

Frequently Asked Questions