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 imageA mirror image is a reflected duplication that appears identical but in reverse. As an optical effect it results from reflection off of substances such as a mirror or water...
of normal writing: it appears normal when it is reflected in a
mirrorA mirror is an object with at least one polished and therefore specularly reflective surface. The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface...
. It is sometimes used as an extremely primitive form of
cipherIn cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. In non-technical usage, a “cipher” is the same thing as a “code”; however, the concepts...
. The most common modern usage of mirror writing can be found on the front of
ambulanceAn ambulance is a vehicle for transporting sick or injured people, to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury. The term ambulance is used to describe a vehicle used to bring medical care to patients outside of the hospital or to transport the patient to hospital for follow-up...
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 mirrorA rear-view mirror is a mirror in automobiles and other vehicles, designed to allow the driver to see rearward through the vehicle's backlight ....
—and understand why they hear a loud siren behind them.
Research suggests that the ability to do mirror writing is probably inherited and caused by atypical language organization in the brain.. It is not known how many people in the population inherit the ability of mirror writing (an informal Australian newspaper experiment identified 10 true mirror-writers in a readership of 65,000). Half of the children of people with the ability inherit it. There are more left-handed mirror writers than right-handed ones, probably because left-handed people tend to have atypical language centers in their brain. 15% of left-handed people have the language centres in both halves of their brain. The cerebral cortex (thin layer of dense brain cells covering the whole brain) and motor homunculus (relates to voluntary movement) are affected by this causing them to be able to read and write backwards quite naturally.
Notable examples
Leonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer....
is famous for having written most of his personal notes in mirror, only using standard writing if he intended his texts to be read by others. There are two popular theories on why he did this. Leonardo da Vinci was
left-handedLeft-handedness is the preference for the left hand over the right for everyday activities such as writing. Most left-handed people exhibit some degree of ambidexterity...
, causing the
inkAn ink is a liquid containing various pigments and/or dyes used for coloring a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush or quill...
to smudge easily if he wrote in standard writing. He may also have wanted to protect his ideas from theft or hide them from the
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
(with whom his scientific findings sometimes collided). However, the latter idea, popular among conspiracy theorists, is highly unlikely: it is (and was even at the time) clear, even to a child, that the text in question could be easily read "backwards" (either directly or through its reflection, such as in a mirror). The true purpose of this practice thus remains unknown. A third theory is that he taught himself to write: given the propensity of children to start writing from the bottom right hand corner of a page, this would have led him to produce mirror writing.
Matteo ZaccoliniMatteo Zaccolini was an Italian painter, priest and author of the late Mannerist and early Baroque periods. He was a mathematical theorist on perspective....
apparently wrote in mirror script his original four volume treatise on optics, color, and perspective in the early 1600s; he was apparently dependent on Leonardo's text.
Mirror writing
calligraphyCalligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of writing . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
was popular in the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among the
BektashiBektashism is an Islamic Sufi order , considered to be a distinct branch of Twelver Shi'a Islam. It was founded in the 13th century by the Islamic saint Hajji Bektash Wali...
order, where it often carried mystical associations. The origins of this mirror writing tradition may date to the pre-Islamic period in rock inscriptions of the western Arabian peninsula.
In some rare forms of dyslexia, a person suffering from dyslexia has the ability to read and/or write, but only in the styles of mirror writing.
External links