Adding an Inverted A

In one of his Word documents Mike keeps a list of model kits on which he's worked. One of the anime kits he has completed is titled with an inverted (upside down) letter A. Mike wonders how he can invert the letter A in this title.

There are multiple ways that you can accomplish this task. You could, if desired, use WordArt or rotate the text in a text box. Both of these approaches have been covered in the tip named Upside-Down Printing.

The approaches detailed in that tip are best suited for larger selections of text. Mike, however, is dealing with a single letter. In this case, you can best solve the problem by relying on Unicode characters that will do the trick. Depending on the font you are using in your document, you might try either of these:

• Type 2200 and immediately press Alt+X.
• Type 2C6F and immediately press Alt+X.

You can see if your font supports an inverted A by displaying the Symbol dialog box (on the Insert tab of the ribbon click Symbol, in the Symbols group, and then click More Symbols). Using the Subset drop-down list, choose Glagolitic. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Symbol dialog box.

You can see the inverted A in the table of available characters. At the bottom of the dialog box you can see the Unicode code for the character. It is this code that you can type and then immediately press Alt+X to display.

If you would like, you can find out how to insert an upside-down A or any other upside-down characters at this site:

http://www.upsidedowntext.com/

Speaking of other, helpful websites, the ShapeCatcher website can come in very handy:

http://shapecatcher.com/

The site allows you to draw the character you want. (For instance, I drew an upside-down A.) When you click on the Recognize link, the site tells you multiple ways to insert the character.

Another possibility is to install a special font to handle your upside-down character needs. You can do a search at any font site for "upside-down font" or "inverted font." Here are just a couple of possibilities:

https://fontzone.net/font-details/upsidedown
https://www.fontspace.com/category/upside-down

Which approach should you choose? Honestly, you should try several different methods and then stick with the approach that best fits your needs.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13659) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.