Palindrome Varieties
There are two other types of palindrome, although neither is particularly common. The first is the word-unit palindrome. As the name suggests, these are palindromes in which the words form the same sentence in either direction, e.g. WOMEN UNDERSTAND MEN; FEW MEN UNDERSTAND WOMEN. Occasionally these are also traditional palindromes, such as in I DID, DID I? but this only happens when each word is itself a traditional palindrome.
The other kind of palindrome is the mirrored palindrome. These are palindromes which are graphically reversible. Not all letters in mirrored palindromes necessarily have symmetry about a vertical axis (A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X) since some letters are (more or less) mirror images of others (e.g. L and J). Therefore a mirrored palindrome is not necessarily also a traditional palindrome. Punctuation and spaces cannot be ignored when creating mirrored palindromes. When reversed A TOYOTA becomes ATOYOT A which, strictly speaking, is not the same. WOT TOW, although fairly meaningless, is a valid mirrored palindrome. Of course, with this type of palindrome, it is important whether upper or lower case letters are used: bid is a mirrored palindrome, but BID is not.
Explore Palindromes
Find out more about palindromes by reading our brief history of palindromes and exploring our list of palindromes. We have a whole section devoted to the famous A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama palindrome, including an article discussing the Panama Palindrome's origin. There is a page of word palindromes and line palindrome poetry. If you want more, don't forget you can alway visit the palindromes books section of our online wordplay bookstore!
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