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 it is reflected in a mirror. It is sometimes used as an extremely primitive form of cipher. The most common modern usage of mirror writing can be found on the front of ambulances, 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—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.[1]. 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[2]). 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.[citation needed]
Notable examples
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Leonardo da Vinci 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-handed, causing the ink 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 Church (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[citation needed], this would have led him to produce mirror writing.
Matteo Zaccolini 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 calligraphy was popular in the Ottoman Empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among the Bektashi order, where it often carried mystical associations.[3] The origins of this mirror writing tradition may date to the pre-Islamic period in rock inscriptions of the western Arabian peninsula.[3]
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.[citation needed]
See also
References
- ^ Mathewson I. (2004). "Mirror writing ability is genetic and probably transmitted as a sex-linked dominant trait: it is hypothesised that mirror writers have bilateral language centres with a callosal interconnection". Med Hypotheses. 62 (5): 733–9. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2003.12.039.
- ^ News in Science - Mirror writing: my genes made me do it - 02/06/2004
- ^ a b Library of Congress image bibliographic data.[1] Retrieved 19 January 2009.