Reverse Text
Reverse characters in any text instantly.
Written by Anil Gautam · Updated
What happens to emoji, flags and accents in reversed text?
The tool reverses Unicode code points, the numbered units that text is stored in. A letter, a digit or a simple emoji such as a smiley face is one code point, so it moves as a single piece and comes out intact. Working on the browser's 16-bit storage units instead would split nearly every emoji into two invalid halves, which show up as replacement symbols.
Characters built from several code points come apart. A national flag is stored as two regional indicator letters: India's flag is I followed by N, and reversed it reads N then I, which displays as the flag of Nicaragua. With a skin tone, a thumbs-up splits into a loose color swatch and a plain yellow thumb, and keycap emoji such as a boxed digit 1 break into pieces. An accent typed as a separate combining mark lands on the wrong letter, while an é stored as one character survives.
Scripts that attach vowel signs to consonants, such as Devanagari, Bengali and Tamil, break the same way: नमस्ते reversed begins with a detached vowel sign and no longer reads as a word.
What is reversed text used for?
Checking palindromes is the classic use. Reverse "Never odd or even" and you get "neve ro ddo reveN"; strip the spaces and capitals and both read neveroddoreven. Longer phrases work once punctuation is ignored too, so "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama" gives amanaplanacanalpanama in both directions. Some words turn into other words, such as stressed into desserts, and an answer or spoiler written backwards cannot be read at a glance.
Letters, spaces, punctuation and line order all reverse together, so "hello world" becomes "dlrow olleh", a sentence ending in a full stop starts with one ("Hello." gives ".olleH") and the last line of a paragraph comes out first. There is no setting to reverse only the order of words or lines. Reversing the output a second time restores the original exactly, broken flags and accents included, because the tool reorders code points without altering any of them. For upside-down text, Flip Text swaps letters for look-alike characters such as ɐ and ǝ, and its Mirror output is the same reversal this tool produces. Reversing runs in your browser as you type.