Reverse Text: Characters, Words, Lines and Flip
Reverse text by characters, word order, letters in each word or line order, or flip it upside down, in your browser. Emoji and accents stay intact. Nothing is uploaded.
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0 characters, 0 bytes
About the Reverse Text tool
The Reverse Text tool flips text around in five different ways: backwards letter by letter, with the words in the opposite order, with each word spelled backwards in place, with the lines in the opposite order, or written upside down with look-alike symbols. The switches can be combined, and the result updates as you type or paste. It is handy for puzzles and palindrome checks, for testing how an app copes with mirrored strings, and for the occasional playful message. Your text is processed in your browser and never leaves your device.
How to use it
Steps
- Type or paste your text on the left. Reverse characters is on to begin with, so the reversed text appears on the right straight away.
- Turn the other switches on or off to change what is reversed. With every switch off, the output is identical to the input.
- Press Copy to copy the result.
The five switches
Reverse characters
Writes each line backwards, so Hello World becomes dlroW olleH. This is what people usually mean by reversing a string, and it is the same as the /string-reverse page.
Reverse word order
Keeps every word as it is but lists the words of each line in the opposite order: Hello World becomes World Hello. A word is any run of characters between spaces, tabs or other whitespace, so punctuation stays attached to the word it touches. The gaps between words stay where they were, so a b becomes b a. This is the same as the /reverse-words page.
Reverse each word
Spells every word backwards but leaves the words where they are: Hello World becomes olleH dlroW.
Reverse line order
Turns the list of lines upside down without touching the text inside them. The three lines a, b and c come out as c, b and a. Line breaks keep their original style, so a Windows file stays a Windows file.
Flip upside down
Replaces letters, digits and common punctuation with Unicode characters that look like the upside-down version, for example Hello becomes Hǝllo. It does not change the order, so for text that reads upside down, turn on Reverse characters as well: hello becomes ollǝɥ.
How the switches combine
The steps run on each line in a fixed order: each word first, then word order, then characters. After that the lines themselves are reversed if Reverse line order is on, and the flip is applied last. Because of this, some combinations are equivalent. Reversing characters together with line order gives dc over ba for the two lines ab and cd, exactly what you would get by reversing the whole text from the very last character to the first. Reversing each word and then the word order also gives the same result as reversing characters.
Whole characters, not pieces
Emoji and accented letters are often stored as several code units, and a naive reversal tears them apart into broken symbols. This tool reverses whole visible characters instead. A family emoji built from several people stays one emoji, so a👨👩👧b becomes b👨👩👧a, and a letter followed by a combining accent keeps its accent. Browsers that provide the standard Intl.Segmenter use it. In older browsers the tool falls back to a built-in rule that keeps combining marks, skin-tone modifiers, flags and joined emoji together.
Good to know
Flipped text is a set of look-alikes
There is no rotation involved. The tool swaps each character for a different Unicode character that resembles it turned around, such as e for ǝ and h for ɥ. Characters without a counterpart, for instance l, o and spaces, are left alone. How well the result looks depends on the fonts of whoever reads it.
Reversing is not encryption
Anyone can reverse text back by repeating the same step, so a reversed message hides nothing. Use real encryption for anything private. Flipping is not a reliable round trip either, because only some characters have a look-alike.
Related tools
To change capital letters instead of the order, use the Text Case Converter. The List Sorter puts lines in alphabetical or numeric order, and the Whitespace Remover cleans up stray spaces and blank lines before or after you reverse. To see the bytes behind your text, try Text to Binary, and for longer writing there is the Text Editor.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between reversing characters and reversing words?
Reversing characters writes the whole line backwards, so Hello World becomes dlroW olleH. Reversing word order keeps each word spelled normally and only swaps their positions, giving World Hello. Reversing each word spells every word backwards but leaves it in place, giving olleH dlroW.
Does reversing text break emoji or accented letters?
No. The tool reverses whole visible characters, so a family emoji made of several joined people, a flag, or a letter with a combining accent stays intact and simply moves to its mirrored position. Older browsers without the standard segmenter use a built-in rule that groups the same pieces together.
Is flipped upside-down text really rotated?
No, nothing is rotated. Each letter, digit or common punctuation mark is swapped for a separate Unicode character that looks like it turned around. Characters that have no such look-alike stay as typed, and the appearance depends on the font used by whoever views the text.
Why is my flipped text still reading left to right?
The flip switch only substitutes look-alike symbols and deliberately does not change the order of the text. To make a sentence read as if the page were turned upside down, switch on Reverse characters together with Flip upside down, so hello comes out as ollǝɥ.
Can I use reversed text to hide a message?
Reversal is not encryption. Repeating the same step restores the original at once, and nobody needs a key or a password to do it. It suits puzzles and games, but anything sensitive should be protected with genuine encryption instead of being written backwards.
What happens to line breaks and spaces when I reverse?
Line breaks keep their original style and position, so Windows, Unix and old Mac files stay consistent. Reversing word order leaves the gaps between words exactly where they were, which means leading, trailing and doubled spaces are preserved rather than collapsed.