Erin McKean, the Dictionary Evangelist, has a post today on the coinage of the term ygology, meaning the study of palindromes.
Her take is that the word was an inevitability of English, demanding birth. No argument there.
But then she also references ambigrams, which are visual representations of words that are somehow symmetric. If you flip them upside down, they form the same word. Or perhaps the negative space in the word forms another word. Probably the most famous such figure is the cover of the book Gödel, Escher, Bach
Posted by nylusmilk on 16 October 2007 at 09:52:04
right now, i’m reading angels and demons by dan brown, of which ambigrams is an important element in the plot. i just find ambigrams really amazing!
Posted by Jason Adams on 16 October 2007 at 11:36:30
Ah that explains the Angels and Demons ambigram on Langdon’s site.
Posted by Melinda Weathers on 16 October 2007 at 13:19:05
OOOOO! I am an ambigram! My initials, anyways, when I write them on my Chipotle leftovers, I write them in such a way that they read the same upside-down and right-side-up: MW
Posted by nylusmilk on 16 October 2007 at 20:19:31
of course, seeing that he’s the one who designed all the ambigrams for the book. ;)