Upside Down Typing

by Melinda Green


Ever wanted to be able to type upside down? I bet you've never even thought about it. I hadn't either until I saw an upside down discussion on a newsgroup. So what is upside down typing? Here's an example:
 

:al&wexa ue s.ajaH ¿bu!&h+ umop ap!s&n s! +eym oS '&nojbsmau e uo uo!ssncs!p umop ap!s&n ue mes I l!+un jay+!a +.upey I '+! +noqe +ybnoy+ ua^a ja^au a^.noh +aq I ¿umop ap!s&n a&h+ o+ alqe aq o+ pa+uem ja^3


So what does that mean? Well, if you print out this page and hold it upside down, You'll find that the above text is simply the previous paragraph typed upside down. Well, sort of. It takes a bit of work to read upside down typing, but of course it takes even more work to type it. I wrote the following applet you can use to painlessly translate into upside down typing or vise versa. Copy the above text and paste it into the NQAS field and click the "NQAS to English" button and you'll see it in its original form.

alt="Your browser understands the <APPLET> tag but isn't running the applet, for some reason." Your browser is completely ignoring the <APPLET> tag! 

Too much trouble to print out this page just to read upside down? Paste the translated text into the "English" box and click "English to NQAS" to see it upside down! Well, sort of.

Darius Bacon has written some "palindromic" poetry that's not only the same backwards as forwards but also upside down!

So what does "NQAS" stand for? I haven't a clue. If you find out please let me know.

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