https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2022/12/27/visually-symmetric-words/

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Visually symmetric words

Posted on 27 December 2022 by John

I recently ran into the following comic strip online:

[brain_palindrome2]

[Update: Thanks to Bryan Cantanzaro for letting me know via the
comments that the image above was created by Hannah Hillam. The
version I found had had her copyright information edited out. I will
replace the image above with a legitimate version shortly.]

[Update 2: I'm not sure this is a Hannah Hillam cartoon per se; I
haven't found the exact source. Hannah Hillam makes a template
available to let people put their own words in the format above, and
the template does not contain a copyright notice. Maybe someone
besides her make the cartoon above. The fact that the words are not
hand drawn suggests this is the case. If you know who created the
image please let me know and I will gladly credit them. ]

The comic is unsettling because it points out that a palindrome is a
symmetric sequence of characters, which is not the same as a visually
symmetric sequence.

What words are symmetric in the sense that "()()" is symmetric, i.e.
visually symmetric rather than a symmetric sequence of characters?

The question isn't well defined without some assumptions. Visual
symmetry depends on whether characters are written in lower case or
upper case, and it depends on the choice of font.

Let's look at upper case first. I will assume the following letters
are symmetric: A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X, and Y. Then the
following words are symmetric: A, AHA, HAH, HUH, I, MAAM, MUM, TAT,
TIT, TOOT, TOT, TUT, WOW.

For lower case, I will assume the following letters are symmetric: i,
l, m, o, u, v, w, x, y. And I will assume b and d are mirror images,
as well as p and q.

With these assumptions, the following words are symmetric: bid, bud,
dib, doob, dub, ulu, wow.

An ulu, according to dictionary.com, is "a knife with a broad, nearly
semicircular blade joined to a short haft at a right angle to the
unsharpened side: a traditional tool of Inuit or Yupik women."

Related posts

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4 thoughts on "Visually symmetric words"

 1.
    Colin Beveridge
    27 December 2022 at 10:27

    I heard on Futility Closet that in a video game -- possibly Mortal
    Kombat -- one of the characters had the word "MAXIMUM" written
    vertically on his clothes so that when he faced the other way, it
    would look the same.

 2.
    Jonah
    27 December 2022 at 11:31

    "bod" is also visually symmetric (short for "body", among other
    things; listed on merriam-webster.com and in fairly common usage,
    e.g., in the phrase "dad bod")

 3.
    Bryan Catanzaro
    27 December 2022 at 12:34

    Please note that this comic was taken (with the attribution
    REMOVED) from Hannah Hillam. https://www.instagram.com/p/
    CgyShBxusuM/

 4.
    John
    27 December 2022 at 13:08

    Thanks, Bryan. I didn't know where the image came from and didn't
    realize it had been tampered with.

    [Update: Maybe the cartoon is a legitimate use of a template the
    author of the comic provides. See the updates in the post.]

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