ɹǝddᴉlɟ ɹoɹɹᴉɯ
Well, it is 2018. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that I learned new powerpointing via a teenpop sensation.
Ariana Grande (I could say ask a schoolgirl, but you ought know this singer after the tragic bombing at her Manchester gig last year and its heartwarming aftermath) has a new song out today. And as it’s a global Number One already, we’re all Arianators now.
She teased it through a tweet, written in a kind of backwards, upside-down text ; ʎɹɔ oʇ ʇɟǝl sɹɐǝʇ ou.
As you’ll note from my pic up top, her accompanying artwork trails the single’s name in mirrored text.
I also like the location address flipped too; ǝʌɐ uooɯʎǝuoɥ.
This drew me to investigate. I realised that you can ‘rotate’ your text box in any slideware of choice. But for normal email, messaging, document text? Fear not. Several sites let you copy and paste in all manner of reverse, flip, mirror ways (upsidedowntext, txtn, & fliptext.info to name just three at time of surfing, although as you can see from my title, they can struggle with the odd letter, like the fallen ‘l’ there).
So you can – on the rare occasion it may be apt – copy words duly altered into your typing. But I wondered that there must be a way to do this mirroring-flipped style of Ariana’s single artwork in the unloved juggernaut that is the Microsoft contribution to meeting sleeping. And so there is.
The method/steps for so morphing your slide text in Powerpoint abound online, including;
- Right click the text box
- Format Shape
- In the panel that opens (typically on right side of screen), click the pentagon icon for “effects”
- Expand the “3-D Rotation” group
- Change the “X Rotation” to 180
As I already alluded, this is a trick you’d probably hardly deploy. Here’s a trio of quick ideas where you might gain that vital little extra recall from your audience;
- a title-style slide that heralds a ‘looking-back’, such as ‘ʍǝᴉʌǝɹ’ or ‘sʇlnsǝɹ’?
- where you aspirationally wish to ‘ɹoɹɹᴉɯ’ something?
- or you want to state that you’re out to turn something upside down, and ‘ʇdnɹsᴉp’?
In any case, a cheeky something to keep invertedly up your presentation sleeve.
